Crowe, 45, the Oscar-winning star of "Gladiator" and "A Beautiful Mind," will play a teacher trying to free his wife from prison after she is wrongly convicted of murder.
The film -- to be released as "The Next Three Days" -- will be shot by Paul Haggis, a best director Oscar-winner in 2006 for "Crash."
Haggis, 56, told Variety that Crowe had been chosen for the part for his "everyman" qualities.
"We've seen him as the gladiator, but he has embodied the Everyman in so many pictures," Haggis said, describing the movie as an exploration of faith and belief.
"The deeper theme here is, would you save the woman you loved if you knew that by doing so, you would turn into a man that woman could no longer love?"
Crowe, who was most recently seen in political thriller "State of Play," is currently working on the Ridley Scott-directed "Robin Hood."

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2009