Good-Fellowes

Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes' next project is making good headway with Bridget Jones director, Sharon Maguire, in line to take the director's chair. Eustace Diamonds, an adaptation of the Anthony Trollope novel, centres around a priceless diamond necklace owned by the Eustace family. However, scheming opportunist Lizzie, claims the jewels as her own after marrying into the family for money and being widowed after a few months. Signing copies of his screenplay to Gosford Park at The Cinema Store on Upper St Martin's Lane in London, Fellowes told us that, after much to-do, the project is finally building momentum. "I wrote the Eustace Diamonds script quite some time ago,' Fellowes told Empire Online this week. "That was the reason I got Gosford Park. It didn't get off the ground at that point but now it seems to be rising from the tomb like Christopher Lee's wives. I've done a re-write for Sharon and I think now the question is who's going to play Lizzie Eustace." Unwilling to to tell us who he has in mind for the part - though apparently there are a number of actresses he'd love to see snap it up - Fellowes will only say that, for the right one, Lizzie Eustace is the role of a lifetime. "It's a wonderful part for an actress because she's very witty and very clever and rather devious, but she's also very good-looking. So an actress who is usually offered parts where she gets to be interesting or she gets to be good-looking, with this one she gets to be both. It's kind of Scarlett O'Hara meets Becky Sharp." Having had his career jacked into overdrive by a certain golden statuette, "The object itself has a kind of iconic power, kind of like a medieval saint or the World Cup." - Fellowes has a sackload of other projects currently on the boil. "I'm doing Pure Dead Magic, it's an adaptation of a book by Debbie Gliori and I'm about to embark upon the second draft. I think that's going to be quite fun, it's about modern witches, it's a children's story - or family movie, whatever it is they call them now." An as-yet-untitled film about nineteenth century New York, an adaptation of Victorian thriller Face of a Stranger and a project called Angel in The House are but three Fellowes' scripts currently lumbering into production, as well as an adaptation of PG Wodehouse's Piccadilly Jim. "Piccadilly Jim has, fingers-crossed, acquired its director - but I can't tell you who. It's a light comedy based mainly in New York but a little bit in England and it's about a young man who's essentially a slacker in search of a good time. Of course, he falls in love and all sorts of things happen. It's light and funny."