Years after Steven Spielberg vowed to adapt Arthur Golden's bestselling Memoirs of a Geisha for the big screen, the film-maker yesterday unveiled a sensational cast and said filming on the white-hot project will begin next month.

Golden's account of an 18-year-old Japanese's orphan's induction into the life of a geisha brings together arguably the greatest ensemble of Asian actors ever lined up for a Hollywood picture.

Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh memorably played sworn enemies in Ang Lee's martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, will respectively take the lead role of Sayuri, and that of the girl's mentor. Ziyi has Hollywood form in Rush Hour 2, while Yeoh played one of the classier Bond girls in Tomorrow Never Dies. Ken Watanabe, Tom Cruise's Oscar-nominated Japanese co-star in The Last Samurai, will play a wealthy businessman and Sayuri's love interest, while Gong Li, the star of such arthouse hits as Farewell My Concubine and Raise The Red Lantern, will play the geisha's rival.

Hollywood has already known for some time that the picture was not going to be directed by Spielberg, as originally thought, and instead Rob Marshall will make his first directorial outing since the Oscar winning Chicago in 2002.

"From the time I first read Arthur Golden's novel, I wanted to see this as a film," Spielberg said in a statement, adding there was "no one better than Rob Marshall" to bring the story to the big screen.

Spielberg will co-produce the project, which is being jointly funded by his DreamWorks studio with Columbia Pictures and leading US production company Spyglass Entertainment.

Filming is set to begin in Los Angles and Japan in September.