Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage arrives for the UK premiere of 'The Frozen Ground,' at a central London cinema, Wednesday, July 17, 2013.

(Joel Ryan | Invision | AP)

Nicolas Cage will sit in the director's chair for just the second time in his career, but this time he'll also star in the movie.

Slash Film reports the Oscar-winning actor will direct "Vengeance: A Love Story," based on the book "Rape: A Love Story," by Syracuse University alumna Joyce Carol Oates. John Mankiewicz, a co-executive producer on "House of Cards," wrote the screenplay.

Syracuse University alumna Joyce Carol Oates, pictured at right in 2010, wrote the "Rape: A Love Story" that Nicolas Cage is adapting into a film, renamed "Vengeance: A Love Story."

According to Variety, Oates' novel is about Teena Maguire, a single mother gang-raped and left for dead in a Niagara Falls park boathouse on the Fourth of July. Her 12-year-old daughter witnesses the horrible crime, but her credibility is questioned in the ensuing trial.

Cage, 52, will play a detective and Gulf War veteran who seeks revenge while investigating the crime.

"I'm excited to work on 'Vengeance: A Love Story' and bring Joyce Carol Oates' bittersweet novel to the screen. Storytelling has always been my passion and I'm honored to work with this talented team to tell a tale of the suffering too many women have endured," Cage said in a statement.

His previous directorial effort was the 2002 indie drama "Sonny," starring James Franco as a discharged Army soldier who doesn't want to return to his past as a male prostitute. Cage appeared in a small role, but "Vengeance" will force him to direct himself throughout the film.

Principal photography on "Vengeance: A Love Story" begins next month in Atlanta. Casting for the roles of Teena and her daughter have not been announced yet.

Oates, 77, is a Lockport, N.Y., native who graduated as valedictorian from SU with an English degree in 1960. She won the National Book Award for her 1969 novel "them" and received Pulitzer Prize nominations for her short story collections "The Wheel of Love and Other Stories" (1970) and "Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories" (2014).

She has not publicly commented on Cage's project, but did recently retweet news about it, including a fan who wrote, "I wish more of the brilliant @JoyceCarolOates' work was adapted; she's one of my favorite authors."

Cage, the nephew of famed director Francis Ford Coppola, has appeared in more than 80 films, including "National Treasure," "Raising Arizona," "Con Air," "Gone in Sixty Seconds" and "Adaptation." He won an Academy Award for best actor in a leading role for 1995's "Leaving Las Vegas."