Dickens is heading back to the big screen; IndieWire reports that Mike Newell, who recently directed the forgettable Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, is in advanced negotiations to direct the latest attempt to adapt the classic Great Expectations. Fell asleep in high school when your English class was plowing through the massive tome? Here’s the basic jist: told from the perspective of a character named Pip, the story follows him on his quest to become a gentleman across a span of thirty years. In that time, he meets an assortment of characters (including the sneering convict Abel Magwich and the lawyer Mr. Jaggers) and falls in love with a girl from his youth named Estella.
This isn’t the first time someone has tried to take a crack at this Dickens story; in 1946, David Lean directed a full period piece adaptation many consider to be the best and the story was also modernized in 1998 by Alfonso Cuaron (starring Ethan Hawke). For this edition, the script comes from David Nicholls (a British novelist and occasional screenwriter) and made the 2009’s Brit List of best unproduced screenplays from outside the United States of America. That’s got to be a positive sign, I think.
Filming is set to start in a few months and all signs point to Newell taking this as his next project, so I hope you’re ready to get your English literature adaptation on. I know I am; Great Expectations is one of the few books I’ve actually read (and re-read) from my high school days and I’m interested to see how it translates on the big screen and more importantly how they mold it to interest a 21st century audience. It may be harder than it looks, unfortunately.
Any interest in a new Great Expectations adaptation? Any? Hello?