The King’s Speech star, who took home last year’s Oscar for Best Actor, has signed on to Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man, an adaptation of Eric Lomax’s award-winning book recounting the tortures he endured while serving in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during WWII. Variety reports that Andy Paterson and Frank Cottrell Boyce will handle the adaptation for Teplitzky (Better Than Sex), with the film going on to recount Lomax’s eventual reunion with his captors on the bridge over the river Kwai, the events of which were captured in the critically acclaimed documentary Enemy My Friend.

Railway Man begins shooting in February. Lionsgate International’s currently shopping the project’s rights at the Toronto International Film Festival. Firth, meanwhile, has a part alongside Gary Oldman and John Hurt in Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which will be in theaters in December. He’s also on the hook for a third Bridget Jones film, which reportedly will reunite Firth with Renee Zellweger and Hugh Grant for a story that involves everyone’s favorite diary-keeping heroine having a baby.

Basically, Firth has the pick of the litter after notching his well-deserved Oscar win, and he’s making sound choices, alternating between commercial efforts (like a Diary sequel) and art house epics that challenge him as a performer. Firth’s versatile enough to succeed in either, and we’ll watch in virtually anything.