Jacob Elordi is to star in a remake of The Executioner's Song.

The 29-year-old actor will play convicted murderer Gary Gilmore in the picture based on Norman Mailer's 1979 Pulitzer-winning novel and will have a hands-on producing role for the first time in his career.

The Executioner's Song was originally brought to the big screen in 1982 (starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore), and that film's director Lawrence Schiller will serve as an executive producer on the new adaptation.

The plot centres on the true story of Gilmore, a cold-blooded murderer who insisted on being executed after being convicted of killing two men in Utah.

Fighting a legal system intent on keeping him alive long after he was sentenced to death, Gilmore became a media sensation and was ultimately executed in 1977.

The film ventures deep into the heart of American violence, media frenzy and loneliness.

United Artists have acquired rights to the project, with Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt producing for the company alongside Elordi, his manager Matt Vioral and Sherry Marsh.

Meanwhile, Jacob starred alongside Margot Robbie in Emerald Fennell's take on Wuthering Heights earlier this year and recalled how he felt "base-level depressed" during filming in the cold British winter.

When asked by Margot if he had a similar experience working with Fennell on the movie as he did when they made Saltburn together, he told Vogue Australia: "I had a completely different experience.

"First of all, I started in January. I hadn't done London like that before.

"When we shot Saltburn, it was that one summer where the sun was out the whole time.

"I didn't expect to get so out of sorts. Waking up every day, it's so dark and so cold. I think I was base-level depressed."

Elordi also revealed that he questioned whether he was "good enough" to portray Heathcliff in the adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel.

The Euphoria star said: "Saltburn allowed for a lot of improv. There's a language to this you can't really step around.

"I think I also knew what she wanted from Heathcliff, and I really wanted to be able to bring it.

"On Saltburn, I could be whoever I wanted.

"But because she had asked me to make [Wuthering Heights], she just texted me and said, 'Will you do this?' It was the first time I'd been like, I don't know if I'm good enough."