Ralph Fiennes will definitely be juggling his schedule this year, as his available time is filling up. Last week, word arrived that he was considering John Le Carre adaptation Our Kind Of Traitor. Now it appears he’s also in negotiations for some fantasy romantic drama in Sands.

James Foley is directing the film, working from a script by novelist Renata Bovara. The story focuses on a surgeon and his wife living in New York who are involved in a nasty accident.

The crash leaves the wife in a coma, and her spirit drifts off into limbo, flitting to a fantastical India where she meets an imaginary man. So she’s wracked with a choice: remain with her mysterious new love, or return to her husband, who is trying desperately to get her back in the land of the living.

Variety’s report doesn’t mention which man Fiennes will play, though he does have experience wooing women in sandy climes after The English Patient, and there’s a chance, we suppose, that this could be one of those situations where the same leading man plays both parts. Foley is looking for an actress to appear opposite Fiennes. Once he has all the details locked in, he aims to start shooting this autumn in Toronto and India.

Fiennes has just directed and starred in Charles Dickens drama The Invisible Woman, and he’s currently at work on Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.