Nicolas Cage will play an Alaska State Trooper who investigated a real Alaska serial murderer in new film The Frozen Ground.

It is unclear whether Cage will play Glenn Flothe, the trooper who eventually caught the serial killer and rapist and took him to prison.

Shooting is set to begin in Anchorage on October 10, with the film to be produced by Emmett Furla Films and Amber Entertainment.

The serial killer, who was named Robert Hansen and nicknamed the Butcher Baker, owned a bakery in a downtown Anchorage mini-mall in the 1970s and '80s whilst living across town with his wife and children.

Within 12 years, the Butcher Baker killed 17 women and raped anther 30, and was finally convicted of those crimes in 1984 and sentenced to 461 years in a state prison in Seward.

Only 12 bodies of the 17 women he killed were found. The others have never been recovered.

Fellow Hollywood star John Cusak is in talks to take the role of Hansen.