Legendary director Steven Spielberg is planning a biopic of former US president Abraham Lincoln to tie in with the 200th anniversary of his birth, reports say.

Spielberg would tackle the Lincoln film in 2009 after completing his next project, a big-screen adaptation of comic-strip hero Tintin, which is due to begin filming in September, reports said on Monday.

Spielberg revealed his hopes to make Lincoln in an interview with German media, before his spokesman Marvin Levy confirmed his plans, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Irish actor Liam Neeson, the star of Spielberg's Oscar-winning World War II epic Schindler's List, has been tipped to play Lincoln, the 16th US president who led the victorious Union side during the American civil war before his assassination in 1865.