Harry Styles to go gay for pay in hotly-anticipated adaptation of iconic queer romance My Policeman

Harry Styles attends The 2019 Met Gala. (Dia Dipasupil/FilmMagic)

Harry Styles, who invented dangly earrings, has been tipped to play a lead role in the upcoming film adaptation of queer book My Policeman.

The untitled film, acquired by Amazon Studios, will be directed by Michael Grandage and adapted by Oscar-nominated writer Ron Nyswaner.

While negotiations are still to be had, sources told Deadline that Styles is set to play gay cop Tom Burgess and Lily James has snagged the role of the female lead.

Harry Styles to star alongside Lily James in My Policeman adaptation. 

The 2012 novel by British author Bethan Roberts is set in the southern England port town of Brighton in 1957.

The love triangle sees schoolteacher Marion (James) and museum curator, Patrick, both fall for a gay policeman, Tom.

With societal pressures weighing down on him, Tom marries Marion. But Tom embarks on an affair with Patrick, with it being love at first sight when they first met at the Brighton Museum years prior.

Patrick’s life is thrown into disarray when Marion finds out about the affair, exposing him to the police and getting him arrested for indecency, with homosexuality being illegal at the time.

Yet, more than 40 years on, an elderly invalid Patrick bursts back into Tom’s life, drudging up feelings long-suppressed.

Production is expected to begin next year, with producers Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Robbie Rogers all roped in for the project along with Cora Palfrey and Philip Herd at Independent Film Company and MGC.

Fine Line star refuses to define his sexuality. 

The Fine Line musician has often been tangled in fans and reporter’s musings on his sexuality, whether he is bisexual and whether he’s hiding it.

In an interview with The Guardian, the 25-year-old was asked whether he, “happens to be a straight dude sprinkling LGBT+ crumbs that lead nowhere”?

“Am I sprinkling in nuggets of sexual ambiguity to try and be more interesting? No,” he replied.

“In terms of how I wanna dress, and what the album sleeve’s gonna be, I tend to make decisions in terms of collaborators I want to work with.

“I want things to look a certain way. Not because it makes me look gay, or it makes me look straight, or it makes me look bisexual, but because I think it looks cool.

“And more than that, I dunno, I just think sexuality’s something that’s fun.”