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Steven Spielberg has said that his Abraham Lincoln biopic will be released after the 2012 US presidential election to avoid it being "political fodder".

The director "The movie will be purposely coming out after next year's election."

The film will be based on the recent best selling book Team Of Rivals, by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Daniel Day-Lewis will play the president, while his wife will be portrayed by actress Sally Field.

The movie will follow Lincoln's journey to abolish slavery and end the American Civil War, but will centre around the final four months of his life.

"It is really a movie about the great work Abraham Lincoln did in the last months of his life," Spielberg said.

The film-maker is preparing to start shooting the movie in Richmond, Virginia because buildings there look "like Washington looked back during the Civil War".

Joseph Gordon-Levitt will take on the role of Lincoln's eldest son Robert Todd Lincoln and Tommy Lee Jones will play Thaddeus Stevens, a Republican leader and congressman from Pennsylvania.

In July another Abraham Lincoln-related film, The Conspirator, was released.

Directed by Robert Redford and starring James McAvoy, the film told the tale of Mary Surratt, a woman accused of playing a part in the assassination of Lincoln in 1865.