Actor Christian Slater has emerged as the unlikely candidate to play British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill in a new film comedy.

Slater has signed up to appear in the laugh-in Churchill: The Hollywood Years - which is a tongue-in-cheek look at Churchill's life before he led the Allied Forces to victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

The plot revolves around a group of Hollywood executives who arrive on the set of a production to find that the lead actor is a fat, balding, cigar smoker. They immediately sack him and replace him with gorgeous Slater.

Other cast members include Scream's Neve Campbell playing a young Queen Elizabeth II.