Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage will soon trade Westeros for East Texas.

The acclaimed actor is the first announced cast member of The Thicket, a big-screen adaptation of author Joe Lansdale's crime thriller of the same name. Dinklage will play Shorty, a bounty hunter in early 20th-century Texas hired by a young man to rescue his sister from the clutches of a murderer named Cut Throat Bill.

"Completely original," Dinklage said of the source material. "The characters and the world they inhabit jumped from the pages for me in such a cinematic way." The Thicket was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "as funny and frightening as anything that could have been dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm -- or Mark Twain."

The film comes courtesy of producer Gianni Nunnari's Hollywood Gang Productions, the producer behind thrillers like 300 and The Departed. "

That Joe Lansdale's dark vision will be brought to life by the brilliantly talented Peter Dinklage starring as Shorty -- it is a dream of mine," Nunnari said. "This is the kind of original movie with edge and style that Hollywood Gang is hungry for; luckily we found all these things in The Thicket. We cannot wait to share this movie with audiences around the world."