Makers of a new film on the life of the Brontës have decided to reconstruct the literary family's famous Haworth home - across the Pennines.

They have chosen Delph, north-east of Oldham, to locate the film which is due to start shooting on Monday, November 5.

And, in a cast change, top British actor John Hurt is now taking the role of the Bronte patriarch.

To make sure they get every detail of the Haworth Parsonage where the family lived correct, designers for AMC Pictures have been in the village making castings of the stone work and taking photographs of the interior.

Alan Bentley, Brontë Parsonage Museum manager, said: "It is crucial they get it right because the building is familiar to millions of people worldwide."

Mr Bentley said he had recently spoken to producer Bazil Stephens who had revealed a change in the cast list.

John Hurt replaces Brian Cox as the Reverend Patrick Brontë and Geraldine Chaplin will play Aunt Branwell. Joan Plowright takes on the part of Tabbitha Ackroyd, the Bronte housekeeper, and Kristin Scott-Thomas will play brother Branwell's likely lover Lady Lidia Robinson.

Rebecca Hall, seen recently on TV as Antoinette in Wild Sargasso Sea, is to take on the part of Emily Brontë, who wrote Wuthering Heights, instead of Bryce Dallas Howard, starr of Spider-Man 3.

And Natalie Press, who can be seen in Charles Dickens's Bleak House, which is being shown again by the BBC, is to play the eldest sister and author of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë. Originally the role was to be performed by Michelle Williams who starred in Dawson's Creek and Brokeback Mountain.

Nineteen year-old Evan Rachel Wood, well-known from the film Running with Scissors, will stay in the role of Anne Brontë, author of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

They are using a defunct church as the location for Haworth parish church, where the Reverend Patrick Brontë arrived with his wife Maria and six children in 1820. Nearby they are to build the replica Parsonage where the Brontë sisters wrote their masterpieces and lived their short lives.

However, their real-life home is not being ignored, and some scenes will be shot in Haworth's famous cobbled Main Street.

The director, Charlie Sturridge, has also visited the village on a number of occasions to ensure all the details are correct.

"It would have been superb if they could have filmed it all here in Haworth, but the Parsonage is too small for the equipment and it would have been too disruptive to our work," Mr Bentley said.

Other locations for the movie - to be called Brontë - will include Brodsworth Hall near Doncaster and Cannon Hall near Barnsley.

The Parsonage saw the deaths of Branwell, aged 31, in September, 1848, followed three months later by Emily, aged 30. Anne died in May, 1849, aged 29, in Scarborough, where she had gone to convalesce, while Charlotte died, aged 38, in March, 1855, in the early stages of pregnancy