Ben Whishaw and Olivia Colman cast in new film from radical Greek director

Director Yorgos Lanthimos. Photograph: Franco Origlia/Getty

The romantic drama meets the creature feature in The Lobster, a new film from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, in which lonely hearts are ordered to find a partner or face being turned into animals. Ben Whishawand Olivia Colman are set to star in the production, which begins shooting next March.

The Lobster marks the English language debut for Lanthimos, who picked up a best foreign film Oscar nomination for his acclaimed 2009 film Dogtooth but has been based in the UK since 2011. Deadline reportsthat Whishaw and Colman will be joined in the cast by Jason Clarke and French actor Léa Seydoux. Clarke was recently seen in Zero Dark Thirtyand The Great Gatsby, while Seydoux co-stars in the Palme d'Or-winningBlue is the Warmest Colour.

Set in a dystopian near future, The Lobster focuses on a group of single men and women who are brought to a sinister hotel and ordered to find a life partner within 45 days. Those who fail to find a mate are then transformed into animals and released into the woods.

The Lobster has been bankrolled as a British, Irish and Greek co-production with a script by Efthimis Filippou. Lanthimos and Filippou's previous oddball collaborations include Dogtooth, a stark thriller about life inside a gated community and the 2011 drama Alps, a quasi ghost-story in which actors are hired to impersonate the recently deceased. The Lobster, however, could prove to be the wildest beast of all.