Tom Hooper happy to have Les Miserables for next film

When you win an Oscar, you always have you choice of projects afterward, and now KING’S SPEECH director Tom Hooper seems to have found his.

Universal has won the battle over a LES MISERABLES film, which they’re having Hooper direct. The story has seen many adaptations on stage and film, and Hooper’s version with be a full-on musical version of the story based on Cameron Mackintosh’s play.

Mackintosh is producing and Bill Nicholson has written the script. They want to start production before the end of the year somewhere in Europe.

For those of you not familiar with the classic (I last saw the movie like 10 years ago so I needed a refresher, here’s the SparkNotes version of the original story:

Les Misérables contains many plots, but the main thread is the story of ex-convict, Jean Valjean (known by his prison number, 24601), who becomes a force for good in the world, but cannot escape his dark past. The novel is divided into five volumes, each volume divided into books, and subdivided into chapters (for a total of three hundred sixty-five chapters). It also contains what is considered the longest sentence in a published novel. Within the borders of the novel’s story, Hugo fills many pages with his thoughts on religion, politics, and society, including several lengthy digressions, one being a discussion on enclosed religious orders, one on the construction of the Paris sewers, another being on argot, and most famously, his retelling of the Battle of Waterloo.

Fun times!