A new trailer for the BBC Film adaptation of Great Expectations whets appetites for Helen Bonham Carter’s and director Mike Newell’s (Four Weddings and a Funeral and the fourth Harry Potter) take on the iconic spinster, Miss Havisham. Unfortunately, the movie is planned for just a limited run in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto on November 8.

At 46, Helena Bonham Carter is one of the youngest actresses to play the part (she is edged out slightly by Gillian Anderson, who was 43 when she starred in the BBC TV miniseries). The film’s director, says, however, “if you read the book she’s actually in her 40′s.”

For the backstory on Miss Havisham’s early life, novelist Ronald Frame’s Havisham, (Macmillan/Picador) arrives here on Nov. 5.  It received admiring reviews when it was published in the U.K., with The Times of London saying, “this re-imagining will delight readers … Frame has a talent for thrilling Victorian melodrama.”  Canada’s National Post said that Frame not only illuminates Dickens’ Miss Havisham, but makes the character his own.

Judge for yourself; print galleys have been released here and it is available on NetGalley.

Great Expectations has inspired other spin-offs, most notably, Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs and Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (which was also made into a movie), but this is the first to be based on Havisham.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 25th, 2013 at 8:40 am and is filed under 2013 -- Fall, Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.