Academy Award-winning screenwriter James Ivory will adapt the family drama “The Judge’s Will” for Fox Searchlight, with Alexander Payne directing.

The movie is based on a New Yorker story that was the final article written by Ivory’s frequent collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who won Oscars for “Howards End” and “A Room With a View.”

Conde Nast Entertainment’s Jeremy Steckler and Dawn Ostroff will produce with Ad Hominem Enterprises, the company that Payne runs with Jim Burke and Jim Taylor. Fox Searchlight picked up the rights to “The Judge’s Will” in 2013.

“The Judge’s Will” details the relationship between an ailing Delhi judge and his wife, each leading separate lives. It begins, “After his second heart attack, the judge knew that he could no longer put off informing his wife about the contents of his will. He did this for the sake of the woman he had been keeping for twenty-five years, who, ever since his first attack, had been agitating about provisions for her future.”

Ivory won the best adapted screenplay Oscar this year for the coming-of-age drama “Call Me by Your Name.” At age 89, he became the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar.

Ivory is repped by Paradigm. The news was first reported by Deadline.