Helena Bonham Carter seems to be able to pull off the Queen of Darkness look with ease – you only need to watch her performance as Bellatrix Lestrange in one of the Harry Potter films to see it – and it looks like she’ll be taking advantage of that in her upcoming role as Miss Havisham in Mike Newell’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ well-known novel, Great Expectations.
The first images of Bonham Carter as the bride left at the altar in her youth, who has worn her wedding dress ever since through the succeeding three decades, have now appeared over at Deadline, and they’re pretty excellent.
As you can imagine, the look has a slightly Tim Burton-esque feel, with Bonham Carter in her darkened mansion, sitting by her desk, looking more than a little bit terrifying – if you were the young Pip, you’d be pretty damn nervous walking into that room.
BAFTA-winning director Mike Newell, whose credits include Four Weddings And A Funeral and Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, is at the helm of this adaptation, with David Nicholls, writer of the novels of One Day and Starter For 10 (as well as their film adaptations), penning the script.
Alongside Bonham Carter is a pretty great cast that includes Ralph Fiennes as the escaped convict Magwitch, Jason Flemyng and Sally Hawkins as Mr. and Mrs. Joe Gargery, Robbie Coltrane as Mr. Jaggers, Ewen Bremner as Wemmick, and the young stars Jeremy Irvine as the protagonist, Pip, and Holliday Grainger as his love interest, and Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, Estella.
The BBC Films-backed adaptation is due to come out about this time next year, with filming scheduled to finish by Christmas. Before then, we can look forward to seeing Bonham Carter collaborating once more with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp on Dark Shadows, due out on 11th May next year. Without further ado, here are the two first images from Newell’s adaptation. (If you want to see them in full size, you can click over to Deadline and click the individual images; the files are literally too big for me to upload.)
