The Old Vic is bringing Timothée Chalamet to the London stage next spring in a production of 4,000 Miles, Amy Herzog’s Pulitzer prize-nominated play about family and intergenerational grief.

Chalamet, who came to prominence with his film role in Luca Guadagnino’s gay romance Call Me By Your Name, will star alongside Eileen Atkins in Herzog’s play, which the Old Vic artistic director, Matthew Warchus, called “gorgeous”.

“Amy Herzog is one of my favourite living writers – she writes with a deceptively powerful simplicity, full of extraordinary grace, precision and radiance,” he said. “I’m very much looking forward to working with this exceptional cast on her gorgeous play which abounds with intimate beauty and truth.”

Herzog’s work was nominated for a Pulitzer in 2013, and the New York Times said plays that were as “truthful and touching and fine” as 4,000 Miles came along “once or maybe twice a season, if we’re lucky”.

Chalamet’s debut on a London stage will be one of the starriest theatre moments of 2020. The Hollywood star, who first appeared as a child actor in Channel 4’s Homeland, has also been cast as Paul Atreides in a forthcoming remake of Dune, and will appear in the sequel to Call Me By Your Name, which is called Find Me.

4,000 Miles is the story of 21-year-old Leo who goes on a cross-country cycling tour with his best friend. After weeks of no contact he arrives alone at the home of his 91-year-old grandmother, Vera, and the pair begin an unlikely co-existence together in Manhattan.

The play has been staged in the UK before, in 2013 at the Ustinov in Bath. The Guardian gave it three stars, praising Herzog’s “understated play” but added that it tugged “at heartstrings with peculiarly American determination”.

Herzog’s 4,000 Miles will form part of Warchus’s fifth season as artistic director at the Old Vic, with other already announced productions including A Christmas Carol, Local Hero, Endgame (in a double bill with Rough for Theatre II, starring Alan Cumming and Daniel Radcliffe).