Oscar winner Roman Polanski is to direct a new big screen adaptation of Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist.
A British cast will be used for the film, which is due to be shot next summer, but there is no word yet on who will star.
Polanski said his two young children inspired him to take up the challenge of putting the much-loved novel into the cinema again.
"I love Dickens and I want to make a family movie," he told Variety.
Screenwriter Ronald Harwood, who together with Polanski won an Academy Award this year for The Pianist, will adapt the story of the orphan who runs away from the workhouse and meets a pickpocket on the London streets.
Oliver!, a 1969 musical version of the novel, won four Oscars in 1969. A 1948 film starred Alec Guinness as master pickpocket Fagin.
