Angelina Jolie developing Netflix movie based on Loung Ung memoir First They Killed My Father

Angelina Jolie is set to write, produce and direct an adaptation of Loung Ung's memoir First They Killed My Father: A Daughter Of Cambodia Remembers in association with Netflix – and her 13-year-old adopted son Maddox will be assisting in the production.

The biography details author and activist Ung's life as a child growing up in Cambodia in the 1970s, dealing with what it was like to be exposed to the extreme Khmer Rouge regime – a four-year period that cost approximately 2m lives throughout the country, through an amalgamation of disease, starvation, forced labour and political executions.

The 40-year-old actress adopted Maddox from a Cambodian orphanage in 2002 when he was seven months old. Speaking about the upcoming project and why she picked Ung's novel as the basis for her next movie, the 50-year-old explained that it "deeply affected" her.

"It deepened forever my understanding of how children experience war and are affected by the emotional memory of it. And it helped me draw closer still to the people of Cambodia, my son's homeland.

"It is a dream come true to be able to adapt this book for the screen, and I'm honoured to work alongside Loung and filmmaker Rithy Panh."

Ung similarly sings Jolie's praises, telling Variety: "Angelina and I met in 2001 in Cambodia, and immediately, I trusted Angelina's heart.

"Through the years, we have become close friends, and my admiration for Angelina as a woman, a mother, a filmmaker, and a humanitarian has only grown. It is with great honour that I entrust my family's story to Angelina to adapt into a film."

News that Jolie is developing a Netflix original project comes just a month after it was announced that the streaming service had acquired the rights to exclusively distribute her husband Brad Pitt's satirical military comedy War Machine.

Jolie made her US directorial debut last year with biographical sport drama Unbroken, which starred Skins actor Jack O'Connell as Olympian Louis Zamperini who, after a near-fatal plane crash, endured 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmembers before becoming a Japanese prisoner-of-war. The movie's script was penned by Joel and Ethan Coen and was received well by critics. It earned itself three nominations at the 2015 Academy Awards.