Following three critically-acclaimed, sold-out seasons on stage in London’s West End, Simon Callow (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love) brings Charles Dickens’ beloved classic A Christmas Carol to the big screen in December 2018. On Tuesday 11 December the stage-to-film adaptation, reimagined especially for cinema, will be released in 444 cinemas across the UK and Ireland by leading event cinema distributors CinemaLive.
Based on Charles Dickens’s own performance adaptation, Simon Callow and director Tom Cairns (Marie and Bruce, Amongst Women) have created a one-man cinematic extravaganza of festive storytelling that is both heart-warming and deeply moving. A Christmas Carol is produced by BBC Films, The Space and Assembly Christmas Carol Ltd.
Simon Callow said: “When Tom Cairns and I started working on our one-man version of A Christmas Carol, we were very excited by the possibilities of putting the audience in direct contact with Dickens, who is even more vividly present in it as a narrator than in his other books, he climbs into your head, he is always by your side, the master conjuror and also the commentator. As we worked on the show, right from the beginning we saw that it might make a wonderful film, quite different from the stage show, drawing the viewer even more closely into contact with the story-teller, using the matchless poetic resources of the camera to summon up the many worlds through which Dickens takes us and the miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. Shot entirely in an abandoned warehouse, it takes the viewer indoors and outdoors, through the seasons and across the haunted city of London. The theatre version is pure theatre, the film, pure cinema, proving how phenomenally rich this favourite of all Christmas stories is.”
In addition to the premiere of the film adaption, the critically acclaimed stage production is making a welcome return to the West End at The Arts Theatre from 8 December 2018 – 12 January 2019, produced by Assembly Festival.
