The life and times of Bob Marley will be coming to a big screen near you--in more ways than one--in the next two years.

Less than two weeks after Martin Scorsese stepped up to direct a documentary about the reggae legend, Marley's widow Rita has inked a deal with the Weinstein Company to make a feature film based on her 2004 autobiography, No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley.

The deal gives the Weinstein Company the rights to develop, produce, and distribute the first-ever biopic on Marley. In a statement, Marley and the firm called the book "an intimate and epic account of their relationship, which went from the streets of Trenchtown to the heights of the international music and political worlds."

"Bob always told me, 'Wherever you are I will be there' and I didn't understand it until much later," said Rita Marley, who will serve as executive producer, in a statement. "Our lives began in a government yard in Trenchtown with hopes of reaching the world through music and through our dreams. I wrote my book to tell my story--of the dreams we shared and those days we spent living and believing in our hope. I saw it and now we get to tell it through our movie."

"I've waited a long time to tell this story, about growing up in Jamaica and meeting Bob and making our music and falling in love and making our family," Marley continued. "All that, and all that we went through went into this. Now is that time. This is my story."

As for casting, Marley has previously suggested that she would like Lauryn Hill, who is married to Rohan Marley, Bob's son from another relationship. She has also said that she would like her grandson Stefan Marley to play Bob, because he's a "spitting image," she told Reuters.

No Woman No Cry is currently scheduled for a late-2009 release.