Jennifer Beals is preparing to star in a Romeo & Juliet-like project…

The 49-year-old part-Puerto Rican actress has been cast as the lead in ABC’s drama pilot Venice.

The drama pilot, written by Byron Balasco, is a sudsy-type project about the haves and the have-nots in California’s most seductive city, Venice. It centers on two rival families and a forbidden and dangerous romance that emerges between them as the families battle for control of the beach city.

Beals will portray Lisa Carver, the elegant bohemian matriarch of the Carver family, one of the two feuding clans.

McG will be directing the pilot from Warner Bros. Television and his Wonderland Sound and Vision studio, which he’ll executive produce as well.

Beals, who rose to acclaim in 1993’s Flashdance and starred in Showtime’s The L Word, most recently appeared on television in The Mob Doctor, Castle and Lie to Me.