EXCLUSIVE: Elementary and Trainspotting star Jonny Lee Miller and Oscar and Grammy-winner Common (The Hate U Give) have been set to star in Nine Lives, the movie adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s sci-fi novelette of the same name.

Set on a moon-base for off-world drilling, the darkly comedic story follows two jaded workers whose excitement at the prospect of incoming human company is dashed when they are instead sent ten clones. Shoot is being lined up for next summer.

Screenplay comes from debut writer-director Siri Rodnes and Tom Basden, who was BAFTA nominated for Fresh Meat. Rodnes will also direct. Producers are Gavin Humphries of Quark Films, who was recently BIFA-nominated for Pin Cushion; and former Sony International producer Josephine Rose (Slaughterhouse Rulez) of Bandit Country, whose upcoming slate also includes fantasy-horror A Spriggan with John Boyega as executive producer. Nine Lives has been selected as part of this year’s upcoming project market at the Macau Film Festival.

Le Guin, who passed away earlier this year, was one of the world’s leading science-fiction and fantasy writers. She was awarded the National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American letters in 2014. She was also one of the few living authors to be inducted into the Library of America.

The influential writer, particularly known for her Earthsea series and The Left Hand Of Darkness, green-lit few movie adaptations of her work. The last big-screen adaptation was Studio Ghibli’s 2006 pic Tales From The Earthsea. Rodnes, whose 2016 short Take Your Partner was BAFTA-nominated and played in Berlin, first adapted a work by Le Guin while at the UK’s NFTS.

Miller is currently filming the seventh season of Elementary for CBS. The Olivier Award-winner is next due to star in the Broadway production of Ink for director Rupert Goold. Rapper and actor Common, who won a Best Original Song Oscar with John Legend for Ava Du Vernay’s 2014 drama Selma, has recently starred in movies including The Hate U Give, Hunter Killer, Smallfoot and the upcoming Eve.

Miller is represented by UTA, and by Kate Buckley at 42. Common is represented by UTA, manager Derek Dudley, and Myman Greenspan. Rodnes and Basden are represented by Casarotto Ramsay.