Danish director Lone Scherfig has made good films in the past; see her 2002 suicide comedy Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself for a dark, delicious treat. But the success of her latest, An Education earned her the unprecedented ability to call her own creative shots for the moment, and she’s using it to move some personal projects through the pipeline.

Scherfig will direct a Danish historical epic titled Music And Silence. Based on a script by Martin Sherman (Mrs. Henderson Presents), Music adapts Rose Tremain’s award-winning book about the scandalous happenings in Danish King Christian IV’s royal court in the years 1629 and 1630. Screen Daily reports that Scherfig will shoot her production in the early half of 2012, and plans to release the picture in 2013. “This is a unique project,” said Christine Langan of BBC Films, which is co-developing and will co-finance the picture. “Rose’s book is symphonic in it’s range of emotions -- sexy, funny and passionate.”

Tremain’s novel, which won the Best Novel prize at the 1999 Whitbread Awards, has a meaty subplot involving a love affair between two fictional characters who are involved in the royal court. I wonder of Scherfig will be able to recruit Education Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan for a part, or if she’ll go with Anne Hathaway, who stars in Scherfig’s next picture, One Day, which will be out in theaters later this summer. No matter who she casts, we’re also interested to see how the director handles an historic epic, when her films to this point have been intimate character studies.