Actor Greg Kinnear is set to play former U.S. president John F. Kennedy in the upcoming miniseries The Kennedys. (Keith Bedford/Reuters)Greg Kinnear has landed the role of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy, with Katie Holmes cast as first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, in History Channel's forthcoming miniseries The Kennedys.

Producers revealed casting and other details about the upcoming TV drama, slated for broadcast on the cable channel in 2011, on Wednesday.

Along with the two American stars in the lead roles, Canadian Barry Pepper is set to portray Robert Kennedy, JFK's younger brother and U.S. attorney general during his brother's administration, while veteran British actor Tom Wilkinson is to play family patriarch Joseph Kennedy, the businessman and ambassador.

In March 2009, Joel Surow, co-creator and executive producer of TV counter-terrorism thriller 24, and Canadian production company Muse Entertainment announced they were developing a miniseries that would take a closer look at the personal dramas of the Kennedy dynasty amid the greater political and social turbulence of the 1960s.

Stephen Kronish, a former co-executive producer of 24 and also a Kennedy scholar, is writing the eight-part miniseries, which he has described as an honest portrait of the famed family.

"We're really trying to see them as people and to strip away some of the patina that has attached itself to them because of their early deaths and to show them, warts and all," he told the Hollywood Reporter in December.

The project will be filmed in the Toronto area this summer.

The Kennedys is History Channel's first foray into the scripted miniseries format.

With files from The Associated Press