Adamson to direct Mister Pip

Kiwi director and producer Andrew Adamson is set to direct an adaptation of Lloyd Jones' award-winning novel, Mister Pip.

Adamson, director of the first two Shrek films and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has written the screenplay for the adaptation and plans are under way to begin filming, film blog ScreenDaily has reported.

Producer Robin Scholes said the movie was to be filmed in Australia, post-produced in New Zealand, and have the sound completed in Britain.

The blog reported that the project had no formal attachments but had won the right to be presented at London's production finance market in October.

Scholes was one of 70 producers pitching at the Melbourne International Film Festival's co-financing market, 37 South.

The project is likely to be a three-way co-production. "The overarching theme is the power of the human imagination to be used for both good and evil," Scholes told ScreenDaily.

Mister Pip was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

It tells the story of a girl in the Papua New Guinea province of Bougainville during a war between soldiers and rebels over copper mining. She becomes obsessed with the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations, which is being read at school by the only white man in the village.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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