Exciting news for fans of kids books: Mike Newell is set to direct a film version of classic 1930s children's fantasy story The Box of Delights, last seen (by readers of a certain age anyway) in a mid-1980s BBC TV adaptation.
The story follows schoolboy Kay Harker who, on returning from boarding school for the Christmas holidays, meets an old Punch & Judy man called Cole Hawlings. Hawlings is being chased by a wizard called Abner Brown and his gang, and entrusts the treasure that the gang is after, the titular box, to Kay for safekeeping. The box, it emerges, allows its owner to shrink, fly and travel into the past (amongst other things).
The book was a sequel to another Kay Harker story by author John Masefield, The Midnight Folk, and both books are reportedly due to be serialised by the BBC again this Christmas, which means you wait 25 years for a Box Of Delights adaptation to come along, and two of them arrive at once.
Still, this one sounds very promising, what with Frank Cottrell Boyce of Millions fame writing the script and Mike "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" Newell directing. Newell is currently finishing work on Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time, so even with the effects needed for this story, it should feel like a holiday for him. From our hazy memories of the last adaptation (we were very young) it's a cracking tale worthy of a cinema adaptation.