The Thick Of It creator Armando Iannucci is adapting a new version of David Copperfield for the big screen.
The writer will be putting a “fresh take” on the Charles Dickens novel, BBC Films said.
No casting has yet been made and the film is in the earliest stages of development.
Christine Langan, head of BBC Films, said: “It’s an amazing story and Armando Iannucci is hugely passionate about it. He has a very fresh way of tackling it.
“He is a Dickens aficionado, so he wants it to be very authentic but it will have his own sensitivity.”
Iannucci will adapt the novel with Simon Blackwell, after they previously worked together on Veep, In The Loop and acclaimed political satire The Thick Of It.
BBC Films, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, recently adapted another Dickens novel, Great Expectations, featuring Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes.
Other BBC Films projects in the works include the adaptation of Julian Barnes’s Man Booker Prize winner The Sense Of An Ending, and documentaries on singer Grace Jones, ballet dancer Sergei Polunin – who dramatically walked out on the Royal Ballet – and jockey AP McCoy in the final year of his career.
Colin Firth is also set to star in a movie following the true story of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst and his attempt to win the first single-handed round-the-world yacht race in 1968.
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