Cannes: `Slumdog Millionaire` star Dev Patel is all set to play Indian mathematics genius Srinivasa Ramanujan in a biopic, to be directed by Matthew Brown.

‘The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan’ will see Patel portray Ramanujam, who made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory and infinite series.

Born in a rural village in Tamil Nadu in 1887, Ramanujan was a self taught mathematician. He spent so much of his time thinking about mathematics that he flunked twice in his college.

In 1912-1913, he sent samples of his theorems to three academics at the University of Cambridge.

G H Hardy recognised his brilliance and invited him to visit and work with him at Cambridge. Ramanujan became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He died at the age of 32 in 1920.

Brown wrote the script on Ramanujan. The film will be produced by Edward R Pressman and Indian producer Prashita Chaudhary`s Cinemorphic Entertainment Company, which is behind Danis Tanovic`s project starring Emraan Hashmi.

Prashita is currently in Cannes as the co-producer of Ari Folman`s `The Congress`, which opened the Directors` Fortnight.

The part-animation and part live-action film stars Robin Wright, Paul Giamatti, Jon Hamm, Harvey Keitel, Danny Huston and Frances Fisher.

It is adapted from the sci-fi novel `The Futurological Congress` by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem.

PTI