In February, we reported that director Mike Newell (Prince of Persia) had signed on to direct a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Today, Showblitz reports that Jeremy Irvine and Helena Bonham Carter are in talks to play Pip and Miss Havisham, respectively. The role of Pip could be another huge opportunity for Irvine who is making his feature debut in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming drama War Horse.
For those unfamiliar with the novel, Great Expectations is about a poor orphan who is tormented by the manipulations of Miss Havisham’s niece Estella before being elevated to the upper class by an anonymous benefactor. Filming on Great Expectations is slated to begin in fall for a 2012 release, which will mark Dickens’ bicentennial.Hit the jump for a full synopsis of Great Expectations.
Here’s the official synopsis for Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations:
Pip, a poor orphan being raised by a cruel sister, does not have much in the way of great expectations between his terrifying experience in a graveyard with a convict named Magwitch and his humiliating visits with the eccentric Miss Havisham’s beautiful but manipulative niece, Estella, who torments him until he is elevated to wealth by an anonymous benefactor. Full of unforgettable characters, Great Expectations is a tale of intrigue, unattainable love, and all of the happiness money can’t buy. Great Expectations has the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for a novel in the English language, according to John Irving, and J. Hillis Miller declares, Great Expectations is the most unified and concentrated expression of Dickens’s abiding sense of the world, and Pip might be called the archetypal Dickens hero.
Post Title → Jeremy Irvine and Helena Bonham Carter May Star in Mike Newell’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS
