Joseph Fiennes cast as Michael Jackson for TV movie

LONDON, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- British film actor Joseph Fiennes is set to portray the late American pop idol, Michael Jackson, in an upcoming TV movie for Sky Arts.

The 45-year-old American Horror Story actor will work opposite Stockard Channing as Elizabeth Taylor and Brian Cox as Marlon Brando in the film, which dramatizes reports of an unlikely road trip the three took after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

In 2011, Vanity Fair first reported the alleged trip, during which the three stars "got as far as Ohio -- all three of them, in a car they drove themselves," after air travel was temporarily banned.

"It's a fun, lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek road trip of what celebrity of that kind is like," Fiennes reportedly said of his new role. "But also it's rather beautiful and poignant about their relationships."