19/12/2006

UK production company Headline Pictures has teamed up with BBC Films and the UK Film Council to produce the follow-up adventures of Peter Pan in Geraldine McCaughrean’s novel Peter Pan in Scarlet.

McCaughrean’s novel was selected by the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children’s Charity (GOSH, owners of the copyright to JM Barrie’s classic novel) as the official sequel to Barrie’s timeless masterpiece following a worldwide search. Peter Pan in Scarlet was published by Oxford University Press in the UK last October and now exists in over 30 different versions worldwide.

In McCaughrean’s book, grown-ups become children again, as Wendy, John and the Lost Boys join Peter Pan for more adventures. Neverland is sadly changed but the spirit of Captain Hook lives on: Tootles is a portly judge; Curly a doctor; Slightly a baronet; and Wendy, a wife and mother. When Wendy decides that Neverland is in trouble, the respectable mothers and fathers put on their children’s clothes to become children again.

The rights for the film and television adaptation of Peter Pan in Scarlet was also the subject of a fierce bidding competition and the winners, announced yesterday, are UK consortium Headline Pictures, the UK Film Council and BBC Films.

Charles Denton, executive director of GOSH, commented: “We have no doubt that [the members of the consortium] will help to build on the ongoing success of Geraldine McCaughrean’s brilliant sequel, which will continue to raise vital funds for GOSH in the way JM Barrie had intended when he gifted the copyright of Peter Pan to the hospital.”

Headline Pictures is a producer of high quality TV drama and feature films. Headed by Stewart Mackinnon, Mark Shivas (former head of BBC Films) and scriptwriter Kevin Hood (Becoming Jane [+see also:
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