Mathieu Kassovitz, the edgy Gallic helmer who caused a stir with his first film La Haine in 1995, will go behind the camera this autumn to shoot Rivières Pourpres (Purple Rivers). The $18 million film is being produced by French major Gaumont and Alain Goldman's Legende Entreprises.

Based on the Jean-Christophe Grangé best-selling novel of the same name, Purple Rivers is a "modern thriller set in a pulsating universe. It's a mixture of Hitchcock and Rosemary's Baby, but it's an action piece too; really entertaining but a huge genre film as well," explains Goldman, who acquired the rights in 1998.

The script, an adaptation by Grangé and Kassovitz, follows the separate but parallel stories of two policemen - one investigating a murder and the other a grave desecration in the French Alps - whose paths eventually converge.

Jean Reno has signed on for the role of the burnt-out cop who's seen too much carnage, and Vincent Cassel is in "advanced talks," according to Goldman, for the part of the other cop. Reno is known to international auds for his work in pics like Léon, Ronin and Mission: Impossible, while Cassel recently did a period-turn in the Oscar-nominated Elizabeth. Goldman calls the actors and director "the dream team", with Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, Gaumont worldwide marketing and distribution prexy adding, "We are absolutely in love with this project."

Indeed, Gaumont has been keen to work with the director who is currently working on the script for an English-lingo, big-budget sci-fi project entitled Déjà Vu. However, taking on Purple Rivers means that project will have to wait a bit.

Industry wisdom has said that Kassovitz would cut his teeth on a smaller budget English-language film before taking on Déja-Vu much as Luc Besson did shooting Léon before tackling The Fifth Element.

But Goldman, who is primarily known for big-budget English-language projects - including Vatel, another Gaumont collaboration currently shooting - felt the book had to be shot in French first.

Lamenting the fact that France has no precedent for this type of thriller, Goldman considers the depth of storytelling in Rivières Pourpres something that could overturn the genre and create an entirely new category of French film.

"If we'd gone to America to do the film it would have been a more commercial affair, but we thought that since it's so innovative for France we would consider the good of the cinema before business," Goldman muses.

Still, Kassovitz has a clause in his contract which gives him the option of directing an English-language version. Nancy Tartaglione