Starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything tells the tale of Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane, but also charts the course of the illness that eroded Hawking's body from the age of 21 and how he reclaimed his life despite it.

Taking on the role of one of the 21st century's most iconic and and brilliant minds is no small challenge, but Redmayne, having shown his range of acting skills and cut his teeth in Les Misérables, My Week with Marilyn and plenty more, he certainly looks up to it.

Here's the official synopsis from Universal:

The Theory of Everything is the story of the most brilliant and celebrated physicist of our time, Stephen Hawking, and Jane Wilde the arts student he fell in love with whilst studying at Cambridge in the 1960s.

Little was expected from Stephen Hawking, a bright but shiftless student of cosmology, given just two years to live following the diagnosis of a fatal illness at 21 years of age. He became galvanized, however, by the love of fellow Cambridge student, Jane Wilde, and he went on to be called the successor to Einstein, as well as a husband and father to their three children. Over the course of their marriage as Stephen’s body collapsed and his academic renown soared, fault lines were exposed that tested the lineaments of their relationship and dramatically altered the course of both of their lives.

The Theory of Everything is set for release on January 1st, 2015.