According to Screen Daily, OLDBOY and STOKER director Park Chan-wook is attached to a new project, and it's an adaptation of the Sarah Waters novel Fingersmith. Casting for the film will begin this month, and the producers want production to start by early 2015.
Although the book is set in Victoria England, Chan-wook's Korean-language adaptation will take place in Korea when the country was occupied by Japanese forces. The film also won't be called Fingersmith. While it doesn't have an English title yet, the Korean title for it will be AGASHI, which means "young lady."
Book description from Amazon:
Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.
One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.
With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways…But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.
In 2005 the BBC produced an miniseries based on Sarah Waters' novel starring Sally Hawkins and Rupert Evans (you can check out the trailer for it below), and the book has been described as "Oliver Twist with a twist."
The book certainly sounds interesting, and as a fan of the director, I'm curious to see Park Chan-wook's take on the source material. In my opinion Chan-wook is one of the best and most talented directors working today, and I'm very excited he'll be working on a new movie soon.