Baz Luhrmann reveals next project will be the 'ultimate coming-of-age' story - and it's been 30 years in the making

Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann has promised fans that his new film about the French heroine Joan of Arc will be the 'ultimate coming-of-age' story.

The Elvis director, 62, is currently searching for a young actress to star in the upcoming blockbuster and also revealed he has been planning to film the epic yarn since the 1990s.

The true story of Joan of Arc centres on a peasant girl who led an army against the English in the Hundred Years War during the Middle Ages.

'I almost did Alexander the Great, and then at one point, I was going down the road on Napoleon, but more than ever, I realised I was waiting for the right time to tell this story and the idea of this ultimate teenage girl coming-of-age story set in a 100-year war,' Luhrmann said in a new interview with Variety .

Elsewhere in the chat, the Moulin Rouge director said he hoped the film would 'inspire' the current generation.

Describing Joan as a young girl from a small town, he continued: ['She] manages to tell this 25-year-old king, ''We're going to be able to unite the country, and you'll be king".

He added: 'It's that inspiration, that uplift. It's like now where the current generation needs to do what the generation before we did, and that makes space, lift the new voices and the new energy, and make sure that they're there to smash through this ossified world.'

Lurhrmann's film is based on the 1974 novel Blood Red, Sister Rose by Australian author Thomas Kenneally, famed for Schindler's List.

The director and and his wife and creative partner Catherine Martin, 59, discussed the film during an appearance at the The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Martin, who will take on the role of production design on the Joan of Arc film, said Lurhrmann had been 'thinking about' making the story for 30 years.

Meanwhile, the director accepted an honour from LACMA at their annual Art+Film Gala fundraiser.

The historical Joan who died at about age 19 invited the wrath of Church leaders because she wore men's clothes, which was considered 'blasphemous' at that time.

Joan's story has been filmed many times in the last 100-years with actresses including Casablanca star Ingrid Bergman and Americans Milla Jovovich and Leelee Sobieski playing the role of France's patron saint.

No budget details have been released for the film but industry reports reveal that Luhrmann has set up the film at Warner Bros. which produced his 2022 blockbuster Elvis.

The musical biopic of Elvis Presley grossed a massive (US) $288,670,284 globally.

It comes after the Gold Coast 'shack' Luhrmann and Martin rented while they were making Elvis sold for $5.72million.

The couple have been living increasingly 'separate lives' in recent years, with Martin living in the Miami area, while the director worked in New York.

In a recent interview with The Australian's Wish magazine, Catherine spoke about having a long-distance relationship with her husband.

The Academy Award-winning designer said the pair spoke regularly on the phone when he was in New York and she stayed at the seaside Gold Coast shack.

Catherine said she enjoyed the 'work/life balance' on the Gold Coast, where she went for daily long morning walks on the beach and classes at her local Pilates studio.

Baz and Catherine have been married for 27 years and recently saw their own children Lilly, 20, and William, 18, move out of home.

Luhrmann rosed to fame as the director of the Australian box office hit Strictly Ballroom in 1992.

He followed it up with more hits including Romeo + Juliet (1996) with Leonardo DiCaprio, Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Australia (2008) both with Nicole Kidman and The Great Gatsby (2013), which also featured DiCaprio.