Ben Kingsley in Scorsese's "Shutter Island"

Ben Kingsley has signed on to co-star in Martin Scorsese's period thriller "Shutter Island" for Paramount Pictures.

Leonardo DiCaprio will star as a US marshal who is sent to the remote New England island in summer 1954 to investigate the disappearance of a patient from the island's prison/mental hospital. Mark Ruffalo has already boarded the project. Kingsley will portray the mental hospital's chief physician, and will make this his first collaboration with Scorsese.

Laeta Kalogridis adapted the screenplay based on a novel by Dennis Lehane.