Gone Girl Scoop: Rosamund Pike Will Play Lead in David Fincher Film of Best-Selling Novel

British actress will play a wife who's gone missing in a new thriller from the filmmaker behind Seven and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Rosamund Pike is the object of David Fincher's desire—on the big screen, that is.

The Jack Reacher star has landed the main role in the famed director's upcoming mystery thriller, Gone Girl, based on the 2012 bestseller by Gillian Flynn.

Per the Hollywood Reporter, the English-born Pike will play a woman who disappears on her wedding anniversary and her husband becomes the prime suspect. Ben Affleck is on board to play her writer-hubby who moves the couple from New York to a small Midwestern town after they both lose their jobs.

Given the novel's use of flashback and unreliable narration among other devices, the subject of a deteriorating marriage would appear right up Fincher's alley.

Pike reportedly beat out A-listers including Charlize Theron and Natalie Portman for the highly coveted part. Also in the running were Emily Blunt, Olivia Wilde and Abbie Cornish while Reese Witherspoon will actually produce the film after her production company acquired the rights to Gone Girl last year.

Flynn wrote the screenplay and shooting is expected to get underway in September.

After getting her big break when she was cast Miranda Frost in 2002's Die Another Day, Pike, 34, has quickly become one of Hollywood's most sought-after actresses, having starred in such films as The Libertine opposite Johnny Depp, An Education for which she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, Surrogates and Barney's Version.

The beauty played Queen Andromeda in 2012's Wrath of the Titans and, after playing a fearless attorney opposite Tom Cruise's ex-military man in Jack Reacher, and she's next set to take a funny turn in Edgar Wright's sci-fi comedy The World's End.

If all goes according to plan, Gone Girl should hit theaters sometime in 2014.