Carrie Brownstein, the creator and star of Portlandia, will complete an unfinished screenplay by the late film-maker Nora Ephron for a movie in which an American woman finds herself transported back to the time of Jane Austen, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Lost in Austen was left incomplete when Ephron – the three-time Oscar-nominated writer of When Harry Met Sally, and writer-director of Sleepless in Seattle and Julie and Julia – died in 2012. The film's producer is the Oscar-winning British director Sam Mendes, who said of Brownstein: "Carrie is smart and funny and original, and the project is very lucky to have her."

Brownstein, previously a guitarist and singer with the indie-rock band Sleater Kinney, is a musician, writer and actor; Portlandia, her US satirical sketch series, has won several awards. She is making her feature film debut as screenwriter on the project.

Lost in Austen centres on a Brooklyn woman named Amanda who is transported back in time to the regency era, when Austen published novels such as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Each of those books has received the big-screen treatment over the past two decades, testament to Hollywood's enduring fascination with the English author.

Last year's Austenland told the story of a fan who travels to a British Austen theme park and meets a Mr Darcy-like potential suitor, while the forthcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes a mashup approach to the 1813 novel. The latter will star Sam Riley as Darcy, with Downton Abbey's Lily James as Elizabeth Bennett in a version of the tale where the undead invade early 18th-century Hertfordshire.

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