Academy Award-winning scribe Akiva Goldsman’s directorial debut is filling out its cast.  The A Beautiful Mind screenwriter already has Colin Farrell set as the lead in his adaptation of Mark Helprin’s novel Winter’s Tale with Russell Crowe and Will Smith taking (relatively small) supporting roles, and now Deadline reports that Matt Bomer (White Collar), Lucy Griffiths (True Blood) and legendary actress Eva Marie Saint (North By Northwest) have joined the cast.  The fantasy tale tells the story of a thief, a dying girl, and a flying white horse in 19th century and contemporary Manhattan, with Farrell playing the thief.Bomer and Griffiths will play Farrell’s parents, but Saint’s pivotal role is being kept under wraps.  The report also adds that Hans Zimmer will perform scoring duties on the pic.  Goldsman has rounded up an impressive supporting cast, including William Hurt and Jessica Brown Findlay, with production set to begin in New York on October 27th.  Hit the jump for a synopsis of the novel.Here’s the synopsis for Winter’s Tale:

New York City is subsumed in arctic winds, dark nights, and white lights, its life unfolds, for it is an extraordinary hive of the imagination, the greatest house ever built, and nothing exists that can check its vitality. One night in winter, Peter Lake–orphan and master-mechanic, attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side.

Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying.

Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and beseiged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature. [Amazon]