Fernando Meirelles ("The Constant Gardener, "City of God") is returning to Brazil to direct "Blindness," a $25 million English-language film based on the 1995 novel by Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago reports Variety.

Book is a philosophical thriller about an epidemic of blindness that sweeps through an unnamed contemporary city and pushes society to the brink of breakdown.

Scripted by Don McKellar, it will shoot next summer in Sao Paolo, Meirelles' hometown, and Toronto.