Actor and director Tom Hanks is being lined up to star in a remake of classic British comedy The Ladykillers.

Hanks is set to play the ringleader role made famous by Sir Alec Guinness in the production, according to Hollywood trade daily Variety.

The 1955 black comedy, set in a street near King's Cross station in London, starred Sir Alec and Peter Sellers as bank robbers who used an unassuming elderly woman's home as a hideout.

Sir Alec Guinness played a gang leader

Now Joel and Ethan Coen are planning to move the action to the Deep South of the US.

Production is due to start early next year, allowing the Coens time to finish work on comedy thriller Intolerable Cruelty, starring Catherine Zeta Jones and George Clooney.

Hanks, who can currently be seen in Road To Perdition, is also due to star as a steam-engine driver in a children's film, The Polar Express, which is due for release at Christmas 2004.

The Ladykillers was one of the last comedies made during Ealing studios' golden era in the 1950s, and has long been a target for Hollywood.

Sir Alec Guinness starred as Professor Marcus, a criminal "mastermind" who tried to dupe Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) into picking up his gang's loot.

But his gang go weak at the knees at the thought of harming Mrs Wilberforce in the film, directed by Alexander Mackendrick.