Great Expectations (2012 film)

Cast

Development

The film is the seventh version of Charles Dickens' novel of the same name. David Nicholls was asked to develop the screenplay after he had worked on the 2007 film And When Did You Last See Your Father?, and while he was working on an adaptation for television of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles for the BBC. He had worked with producers Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley on the 2007 film, and they approached him to work on Great Expectations. During the development of the film, Nicholls published the novel One Day, which was subsequently adapted into a film in 2011. Nicholls described in interviews that he saw Dickens' work as his childhood defining novel, having first read the book when he was fourteen and it having since remained his favourite. He also praised the 1946 version, directed by David Lean.

Mike Newell was looking to develop Dickens' Dombey and Son for the screen, but after it didn't go ahead, he was told about Nicholls' script. The two worked together on further developing the screenplay and finding the funding for the film. Nicholls thought there was a problem with choosing the ending for the film, as Dickens wrote both a downbeat ending and a more positive version. He described their solution as, "What we've tried to do is to make it work as a love story without sentimentalising the book", having criticised the ending of the David Lean version.

Filming

The former headquarters of Gillette on the A4 road was used as the main filming location. The interior was transformed into a Victorian era street scene.

The production also shot many scenes in Kent including St Thomas a Becket Church in Fairfield, Swale Nature Reserve Shellness, Oare and Elmley Marshes, Stangate Creek, The Historic Dockyard in Chatham and Thames and Medway Canal.

Release

A preview of the film took place at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012. The world premiere of Great Expectations took place at the Odeon Leicester Square on 21 October 2012, which closed the 2012 BFI London Film Festival. Both Helena Bonham Carter and her husband, Tim Burton, were inducted into the British Film Institute Fellowship at the event. In the UK, advance screenings were scheduled for 26 November 2012, with the nationwide release date of 30 November as a 12A rated release.

Reception

Great Expectations received generally positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 64%, based on 76 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Not the best version of the oft-filmed Dickens classic but far from the worst, Mike Newell's Great Expectations breathes just enough life into the source material to justify yet another adaptation." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 60 out of 100, based on 23 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".