Ang Lee is heading for Woodstock

After taking on such varied subjects as sexual espionage, gay cowboys, green superheroes and medieval Chinese kung fu fighters, Ang Lee is now poised to wear flowers in his hair - metaphorically speaking, of course. The Brokeback Mountain director's latest project will be a comedy about that iconic event of the hippy era, Woodstock.

According to Variety, Taking Woodstock will be based on the memoir of a motel owner who found a new venue for a music festival in Bethel, New York and paved the way for the legendary 1969 concert. The project is based on Elliot Tiber's Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, Concert, and a Life, and will focus on Tiber and the "colourful ensemble" around him. This will allow Lee to avoid going down the well-trodden route of concentrating on the epochal concert itself - and also bypass those potentially expensive music licensing deals.

Taking Woodstock is set to reunite Lee with his longtime writer James Schamus, who also scripted the likes of The Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil and Lust, Caution.

The film is set to start production with a budget of $5-10m before the end of the year. The start date probably involves shelving Lee's planned A Little Game, a rom-com about a couple who decide to play along after rumours start circulating that they are splitting up, only to find that their friends thought they were terrible together.