15/05/2011

UK-based Brilliant Films and Germany's Tele Munchen Group (TMG) are teaming up to co-produce Crooked House, a feature film based on Agatha Christie’s murder mystery novel of the same name.

Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) and Tim Rose Price (The Serpent’s Kiss) have adapted the screenplay from the original source material. Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, Death at a Funeral) will direct.

Matthew Goode (Brideshead Revisited [+see also:
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trailer
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film profile]), Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins, Victor Victoria, Princess Diaries) and Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, In Treatment) will round out the cast.

Principal photography is scheduled to begin later this year in the UK.

The film will be produced by TMG’s Herbert Kloiber, with Brilliant Films’ Joe Abrams and Rory Gilmartin.

“It’s great to be making this film with Brilliant," said Kloiber. “Crooked House is quintessential Agatha Christie – watertight plotting and an ensemble of wonderful character roles – and the combination of Christie, Julian Fellowes and Neil LaBute is a hugely exciting one. We’re honored to be bringing such a celebrated classic to the big screen with such a prestigious cast.”

“Agatha Christie was an iconic author and great story-teller – it’s been too long since her work has been seen on the big screen," said La Bute. "My vision for the film is very much as a fun and exotic murder mystery – and as such, it will be in keeping with the great Christie theatrical event movies of the 1970s, such as Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile.”