Ron Howard appeared in 1970s sitcom Happy Days

Howard, who made A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13, will direct Last Man Home, about a soldier missing in the country, said Hollywood newspaper Daily Variety.

The film is set in Iraq days before the US-led invasion in 2003, while the soldier disappeared during the Gulf War conflict some 13 years earlier.

A number of Iraq-based films have recently been made, including Jarhead.

Actor Samuel L Jackson has also been lined up for another film based on the conflict in the Middle Eastern country, playing an army medic dealing with the aftermath of a tour of duty in Iraq.

And Harrison Ford is currently filming No True Glory: The Battle For Fallujah, while Stop-Loss, the story of a soldier who refuses to return to his duties in Iraq, is also in the pipeline.