EXCLUSIVE: Willem Dafoe is finalizing his second project since being nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Florida Project. He’s in talks to star in The Lighthouse, an RT Features-produced thriller that The Witch helmer Robert Eggers wrote and will direct for New Regency and A24. Dafoe will play the role of Old, an aging lighthouse keeper. Set at the start of the 20th century, the film is about lighthouse keepers in Maine. The pic will be shot in Nova Scotia. Call Me By Your Name‘s Rodrigo Teixeira is producing through his RT Features banner with Jan Van Hoy’s Parts & Labor.

RT Features and Parts & Labor developed The Lighthouse from an idea with Eggers. Teixiera and Van Hoy re-team with Eggers after they collaborated on the sleeper hit The Witch. Teixeira, and RT’s Lourenço Sant’ Anna are producing with Van Hoy, and Youree Henley. The film expands RT’s relationship with New Regency: they are in post-production on the James Gray-directed Ad Astra, the sci-fi film that stars Brad Pitt, which Fox will release later this year

.Dafoe was just set to join Edward Norton in Motherless Brooklyn, the drama that Norton is directing and Warner Bros will release, based on the Jonathan Lethem novel.

Dafoe who’s nominated for his role as the cantankerous motel handyman and guardian angel to the kids there in Sean Baker-directe The Florida Project for A24, has upcoming the Julian Schnabel-directed At Eternity’s Gate and James Wan’s Aquaman.

He is repped by CAA and Circle of Confusion.