Vincent Cassel has signed on to star in David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises" for Focus Features and BBC Films.

Written by Steve Knight ("Dirty Pretty Things"), the London-based thriller centers on a nurse (Naomi Watts) investigating the identity of a young Russian prostitute who dies in childbirth. She unwittingly stumbles into a Russian police operation that seeks to expose a major Russian Mafia prostitution ring.

Cassel has been cast as Petrid, whose family owns a Russian brothel.

Paul Webster of Kudos Film is producing with Serendipity Point Films' Robert Lantos.

Cassel most recently played Francois Toulour in Warner Bros. Pictures' "Ocean's Twelve" and LaRoche in the Weinstein Co.'s "Derailed." He is set to reunite with director Mathieu Kassovitz in 20th Century Fox's "Babylon A.D.," opposite Vin Diesel. One of Cassel's earliest starring roles was in Kassovitz's "La Haine" (1996).

Cassel is repped by CAA and Intertalent.