Successful Auckland filmmaker Andrew Adamson is to direct a screen adaptation of the award-winning New Zealand novel Mister Pip.
Adamson, the director of the first two Shrek and Narnia films, wrote the screenplay adaptation of Lloyd Jones' novel and will direct the film for producer Robin Scholes, the Screen Daily blog reported.
Scholes said Mister Pip would be filmed in Australia, with post-production done in New Zealand and sound completed in Britain.
Mister Pip is set in the Papua New Guinea-controlled island of Bougainville during a war over copper mining in the early 1990s.
It is narrated by 13-year-old Matilda, who becomes transfixed by Pip, the character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, which is read to her class by an eccentric teacher, the only white man in the village.
The project will be presented at London's Production Finance Market (PFM) in October.
Screen Daily said Scholes was pitching at the Melbourne International Film Festival's co-financing market, 37 Degrees South.
"The overarching theme is the power of the human imagination to be used for both good and evil," she said.
"Meeting 37 degrees South's guests in an atmosphere in which they were not distracted by the need to sell films, was a great advantage."
NZPA