Stowe's 'Captives' set for sail

Madeleine Stowe will be making her directorial debut with "Unbound Captives" from a script she wrote. Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and Robert Pattinson will star in the period drama.

According to Variety, Gil Netter and Grant Hill will handle production duties with Ashok Amritraj's Hyde Park Entertainment.

Stowe turned down millions of dollars for the script back in 1993. She collaborated with her husband, actor Brian Benben, to write "Unbound Captives" with herself playing the female lead.

She would have played a woman (now to be played by Weisz) whose husband is killed and her two children kidnapped by a Comanche war party in 1859. She is later rescued by a frontiersman, to be played by Jackman. Pattinson will play the son.

Fox had offered Stowe $5 million for her script, with Ridley Scott set to direct and Russell Crowe to star. She turned it down because there was no guarantee she would be given anything other than a screenwriting credit.

The idea of directing came from Netter as she spent years working on the script and visualizing every scene.

In Variety, Stowe stated: "Gil made me realize it when he said there isn't anyone who's going to make the movie you want to make."

Stowe will be helped by one of the best cinematographers in the business in John Toll, who shot period epics such as “Legends of the Fall,” "Braveheart," “The Thin Red Line” and "The Last Samurai." Toll most recently shot “Tropic Thunder.”

Production is scheduled to start at the end of 2009.