HBO has finally confirmed a premiere date for “Big Little Lies,” their seven-episode, star-studded limited series based on Liane Moriarty’s 2014 bestselling novel of the same name. The hotly anticipated project will debut February 19 on the premium cable network.

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (“Wild”) and written by David E. Kelley (“Ally McBeal”), the darkly comedic murder mystery centers on three mothers (Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, and Shailene Woodley) of kindergartners in the same class who become embroiled in a homicide investigation, exploring with humor and compassion issues of infidelity, divorce, bullying, and domestic violence.

The three Hollywood heavyweights leading the cast are joined by costars Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, and Alexander Skarsgård.

Witherspoon, her former Pacific Standard producing partner Bruna Papandrea, and Kidman are among the project’s executive producers. Barbara Hall and Moriarty produced the series.

Moriarty has identified the “real impetus” behind “Big Little Lies” as a radio interview she heard “in which a woman was talking about how her father had abused her mother, the trauma of it.” The author explained, “Towards the end of the interview, she described returning home as a grown woman and going to hide under the bed when her parents began to argue. Everything that that signified about the kind of childhood she’d had spoke to me. I wound up using that scene in this novel.”