The 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth will be upon us in 2012, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, part of the bicentennial celebrations will be a new film of Great Expectations, directed by Mike Newell{
Great Expectations, you'll recall, is the one about Philip Pirrip, popularly known as Pip, an orphan being raised by his tyrannical aunt and rather lovely uncle, who encounters escaped convict Magwitch in a graveyard: a meeting that will change his life forever. It's also the one with the decaying, wedding-dress-clad Miss Havisham, and her chilly ward Estella, for whom Pip develops an unhealthy lifelong crush.
Part of the journey is Pip's transformation from zero to gentleman via a mysteriously inherited fortune, lending it the sobriquet "A Snob's Progress" from some of its detractors, but it's generally regarded as one of the best - if not the very finest - entries in the entire Dickens canon. It's been filmed many times before, most significantly by David Lean in 1946. Among countless other adaptations, the stand-out is a six-part BBC version from the late 1980s which starred Anthony Hopkins as Magwitch. The most recent big-screen adaptation was 1998's updated take, with Robert De Niro, Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Newell's Great Expectations will form an official part of the 2012 celebrations, which will also include a lengthy BBC Dickens season (featuring new and old programmes) and a retrospective at the BFI. Newell's producers will be Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen, and if it's due next year, the project will be casting shortly...