Academy Award nominees Willem Dafoe and Edward Norton will be seen together in the upcoming thriller Motherless Brooklyn, an adaptation of the Jonathan Lethem novel of the same name.

The novel won the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. In the story, Lethem's protagonist, Lionel Essrog, has Tourette syndrome and works as a private eye at a makeshift detective agency.

Norton will star as Essrog in the film, set in 1954. The story is based on a young woman protesting against a powerful developer, who designs neighbourhoods as slums, so his people can buy up the property. Dafoe will play the developer's brother.

Dafoe recently received his third Academy Award nomination for his supporting role as motel operator Bobby Hicks in The Florida Project. He was previously nominated for Oliver Stone's Platoon in 1986 and Shadow of the Vampire in 2000.