Award-winning movie director Oliver Stone will begin shooting scenes for his upcoming historical epic "Alexander The Great" in Thailand this week, a publicist said Wednesday.

Hundreds of Thai and foreign cast and crew members will start filming scenes Thursday in Thailand for the movie about the life of Alexander the Great, starring Colin Farrell as the Macedonian conqueror, publicist Michael Singer said.

"Alexander The Great" also features Hollywood heavyweights such as Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Val Kilmer. It was not immediately known which of those stars will be in Thailand for the scenes filmed there.

"It is a very large-scale movie. We are shooting large-scale scenes in Thailand which involve elephants," Michael Singer told The Associated Press. "We have a lot of participants from Thailand, both in front of and in back of the camera, who are Thais." Parts of the story that take place in India will actually be shot in Thailand, he said, adding that the shoot will end early February 2004.

Michael Singer refused to say exactly where in Thailand the filming would take place, but cast members said on condition of anonymity that the Thailand sets for "Alexander The Great" are in the provinces of Saraburi and Ubon Ratchathani.

Saraburi is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of Bangkok and Ubon Ratchathani is about 500 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of the Thai capital Bangkok, close to the border with neighboring Laos.

It is the final stop for the "Alexander The Great" production crew, which began shooting in September and has already filmed scenes on location in Morocco and at studios near London, Singer added.

Stone wrote the film, which tells the story of the relentless conqueror Alexander, born in 356 B.C., who assembled the largest empire the world had ever seen by the age of 32.

Stone won best director Academy Awards for 1989's "Born on the Fourth of July," the 1986 Vietnam War drama "Platoon," and the best adapted screenplay Oscar for 1978's "Midnight Express."