12/08/2010

The life of revered British writer Charles Dickens will soon be committed to film. Several of his novels – including Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations – have been adapted for film and all his works have found television homes.

Hollywood film producer and founder of writemovies.com, Alex Ross is planning a $20 million-budgeted film The Chimes, which will focus on an almost cataclysmic love affair in the life of the author. When Dickens falls in love with beautiful and mysterious Isabella he is drawn into her dark, dangerous world and risks everything to be with her, even his life.

For 15 years Ross was a Hollywood literary manager during which time he discovered The Truman Show and its writer Andrew Niccol, later selling his agency business Fortis Entertainment to actress Sandra Bullock.

British screenwriter Callie Lane has written The Chimes. Lane is also adapting The Chimes as a stage musical, which will also be produced by Ross and this is expected to debut in London during summer 2011. The search for director and casts for both projects is currently underway.

Ross said, “The Chimes is a deeply imaginative script about one of the world’s favourite authors and we can’t wait to bring this compelling love story to stage and screen audiences.”

The film will shoot in London and Italy and filming is expected to begin in summer 2011 and it should be complete in time for Dickens’ bicentenary in 2012.

Julian Richards’ 2009 documentary Charles Dickens’s London looked at the places he lived and worked and how he used them in his novels and stories. Anthony Hopkins played the author in the 1970 television production The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens.