Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” to get film treatment

PanARMENIAN.Net - Director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Tom Stoppard are joining forces to bring a new version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to the big screen. The project, which will be a period piece set in the 19th century like Dickens’ original, is being developed for Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures. Ellison, Miller, Scott Rudin and Jennifer Fox will serve as producers, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

Dickens’ classic 1843 novella about Ebenezer Scrooge and his redemptive Christmas Eve tour of the holiday past, present and future has already been adapted for numerous film and TV shows — among them, Brian Desmond Hurt’s famous 1951 version starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge; Ronald Neame’s 1970 musical adaptation Scrooge, with Albert Finney in the title role; and Richard Donner’s modern-day comedy takeoff Scrooged, starring Bill Murray.

The project would reunite Miller, who is repped by CAA, with Annapurna, which produced his last film, 2014’s Foxcatcher, for which he received his second best director Oscar nomination.

Stoppard, repped by Paradigm, is the prolific British playwright and screenwriter who won an original screenplay Oscar for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, and whose next film is the 18th century love story Tulip Fever, which is set to be released this year by The Weinstein Company.