Nicole Beharie - best-known for her role opposite her now-boyfriend Michael Fassbender in 2011's Shame - has been tapped to play the female lead in a modern television adaptation of Sleepy Hollow.

Beharie will play a detective in the small town of Sleepy Hollow, poised to leave for the FBI Academy in a week when she gets involved with Ichabod Crane, a fugitive indicted for the murder of a policeman who claims to be a soldier from the Revolutionary War.

Fringe creators Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci are on board to pen the pilot and serve as executive producers for the FOX drama. Len Wiseman is set to direct the pilot.

Orlando Jones and Dexter's Katia Winter have also been cast as a detective and Ichabod Crane's wife, respectively.