Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise is to be adapted for the big screen by Michael Almereyda, the writer-director best known for Hamlet and Experimenter.

Almereyda will adapt and direct the story of Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler studies in a fictional midwestern town in the US, who is forced to confront his fear of death when a train carriage derails nearby, releasing a poisonous chemical cloud that hovers over his town.

White Noise is considered one of DeLillo’s most important works, and won a US national book award for fiction in 1985.

Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld had optioned the story in 2007, but the project never got off the ground. Film producer Uri Singer, who has worked with Almereyda several times before, has now bought the rights to the story.

“I think the book combines a sense of humour with a sense of menace,” Singer said. “It has great dialogue and features many cinematic episodes. It radiates an appreciation of American life but also elements of satire.”

“There’s a central love story between a husband and wife, but with an awareness of the secrets and fears that they keep from one another.”

Previous adaptations of DeLillo’s books have not fared well at the cinema. Despite casting Robert Pattinson, David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Cosmopolis made just $6.1m (£5m) on a $20.5m budget, and Benoît Jacquot’s Never Ever, an adaptation of The Body Artist, received mixed reviews after showings at the Venice and Toronto film festivals this year.