Lloyd Jones’s Commonwealth Prize-winning novel Mister Pip will be adapted for the screen by Andrew Adamson, director of Shrek and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

ScreenDaily reports that producer Robin Scholes plans to film Mister Pip in Australia; post-production and sound will be completed in the UK and New Zealand. It is likely to be a three-way co-production.

The project has no formal attachments but has just won the right to be presented at London’s Production Finance Market (PFM) in October. Scholes was one of seventy producers pitching at the Melbourne International Film Festival’s co-financing market, 37º South.

Mister Pip will be principally set in the Papua New Guinea province of Bougainville during an ongoing war between soldiers and rebels over copper mining. It tells the story of a young girl who becomes transfixed by the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations, which is being read at school by the only white man in the village.

“The overarching theme is the power of the human imagination to be used for both good and evil,” Scholes told ScreenDaily. “Meeting 37º South’s guests in an atmosphere in which they were not distracted by the need to sell films, was a great advantage.”