Haley Bennett cast as final lead opposite Emily Blunt in The Girl On The Train

DreamWorks has finally named Haley Bennett as the actress who will be playing the third and final, female lead in the upcoming movie adaptation of The Girl On The Train. She will be star opposite Sicario actress Emily Blunt as well as recently confirmed Rebecca Ferguson who was last seen alongside Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

The film will centre on Blunt's character Rachel Watson, a woman who commutes to work every day so that her housemate doesn't realise that she has been unemployed for two years. During her repetitive journey, she becomes obsessed with a couple that she sees every day as she passes by on the train, becoming fascinated with the idea of finding out more about them. But one day, she witnesses a murder and soon becomes entangled in the ensuing investigation, as she tries to figure out what really happened.

The 27-year-old will feature as Megan whilst Ferguson is said to be playing Anna in the project, the former mistress and then wife of Rachel's ex-husband Tom, who is yet to be cast. Even though Rachel is the novel's main protagonist in terms of the plot, the whole story is told from each of the three women's perspectives so it's no surprise that the trio were the first roles to be filled.

Tate Taylor (The Help) is directing the adaptation, while Men, Women & Children screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson will be penning the script. It will be released sometime in 2016. DreamWorks acquired the rights to make a film from the book, even before it was published in January 2015. The novel debuted at number one on the The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers list when it was released, and remained there for 13 consecutive weeks, and spent 20 weeks at the top of the UK hardback book chart.

Dubbed the next Gone Girl, the film version will take place in the US despite the novel being set in the UK, something that author Hawkins admits she's not worried about. "I'm not really concerned about the repositioning as I think it is the type of story that could take place in any commuter town," she told the Sunday Times in July. While there seems to be a trend of bestselling authors becoming involved in the big-screen interpretations, she said: "I don't want to be involved... let them get on with it."

Bennett currently has a few future projects in the pipeline, including a picture set to be directed by Warren Beatty and star Lily Collins, Taissa Farmiga and Alec Baldwin, as well as a similarly unnamed Terrence Malick movie which will see her acting against Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Rooney Mara.