EXCLUSIVE: Aidan Gillen, whose seven-season run on HBO’s epic drama Game Of Thrones hit its apex during Sunday’s equally epic season finale, has been set to play James Joyce in Robert Mullan’s new film James And Lucia. Gillen played the scheming yet somehow likable Lord Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish on GoT, and without giving too much away his character was a key plot point in Sunday’s Season 7 finale that was the series’ most-watched episode ever.

James Joyce Associated Press

The movie, written and to be directed by Mullan (Mad To Be Normal), centers on the famed Irish writer’s life as he writes Finnegans Wake and his daughter Lucia’s mental health deteriorates. Lucia, a professional dancer, was once treated by Carl Jung and diagnosed as schizophrenic in the mid-1930s; a failed romance with playwright Samuel Beckett was particularly damaging to her.

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The film tells of the heroic struggle of the near-blind Joyce to protect and support his beloved daughter. That role has yet to be cast.

Shoreline Entertainment’s Morris Ruskin, Jesus Gonzalez’s Calach Films and Mullan’s Sisyphus Films are producers. Shooting is eyed to begin in early 2018 in Dublin and Luxembourg.

The Ireland-born Gillen’s credits include HBO’s The Wire and the Maze Runner, for which he reprises his role in Maze Runner: The Death Cure which hits theaters in January. He also joined the cast for Season 4 of the BBC/Netflix series Peaky Blinders.

Gillen is repped by Greene & Associates Talent Agency, Coronel Group in the U.S. and Independent Talent Group in the UK.