Focus Features and BBC Films have attached David Cronenberg to direct "Eastern Promises," a $15-$20 million budget London thriller penned by Steve Knight ("Dirty Pretty Things") reports Variety.

The script digs into the seamy underside of life in the U.K. capital and focuses on a young midwife drawn into investigating the identity of a mysterious Russian girl who dies in childbirth on Christmas Eve. The nurse stumbles into danger when she discovers that the dead woman was a prostitute ensnared by a sex-trafficking gang.

Focus is taking worldwide rights on the film, Cronenberg and Knight have just started working together on the script, and the aim is to shoot the project in the Fall depending upon Cronenberg's commitment to the Bruce Wagner-scripted "Maps to the Stars".