Taerg swen sredaer! Ahem. Great news readers! One of the quaintest children’s stories of our times is getting a big screen adaptation, and it has instant classic written all over it, if wishful thinking if alive and well. Esio Trot, Raold Dahl’s 1990 illustrated sub-micro –novella is soon going into production. It seems a cheat to just refer to this as a children’s book, as it easily translates adult themes on level enjoyable to all ages.
Which is good, because I don’t know how many children skew towards films that star Dustin Hoffman and Dame Judi Dench, because those are the two Oscar winning actors that Irish director Dearbhla Walsh will be working with, as reported by Showbiz411. With that kind of talent leading a film that will be adapted from an admittedly slight narrative, the bulk of the work will come down to Walsh, but she won the 2009 Primetime Emmy for her miniseries Little Dorrit and that’s on top of a solid career in television work in series such as Shameless and Borgia.
Esio Trot is the age-old tale of a man who lies in order to attract the attention of a woman, only sweeter and weirder. Mr. Hoppy, a bashful old fellow is in love with Ms Silver, the woman in the apartment below his. She has a tiny pet tortoise that she wishes would grow larger, and Mr. Hoppy has just the ticket: a semi-elaborate scheme. I expect the movie will elaborate further on said scheme in order to pull off a normal runtime. I certainly hope Walsh will go for a more stylized look than your average children’s film, or whatever this eventually gets marketed as.
In the meantime, you can catch Dench inspiring Oscar buzz in Stephen Fears’ drama Philomena opposite Steve Coogan. And Hoffman just directed his first film, Quartet, based on Ronald Harwood’s play of the same name.
An England production is set to begin filming.
