Julie Taymor, award-winning writer-director and best known for creating "The Lion King" on Broadway and directing the Oscar-winning "Frida" and "Across the Universe", is gathering a Oscar-studded cast for her big-screen adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" that, in a gender-defying twist, will see Helen Mirren reigning over the magical island.

The play centers on Prospero, an exiled duke-turned-sorcerer, Taymor -- who likes to take an experimental approach to her stage and film projects -...