‘David Copperfield’ Cast Adds Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie Alongside Dev Patel

The David Copperfield cast keeps getting better and better. Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie are the latest additions to the upcoming Charles Dickens adaptation from Veep creator Armando Iannucci. Dev Patel stars in the project, called The Personal History of David Copperfield, which updates Dickens’ tale to modern times.

Everything about this new adaptation of David Copperfiled sounds pretty damn great. Armando Iannucci, creator of Veep and director of the hysterically funny The Death of Stalin, is directing. Dev Patel is starring. And now, Tilda Swinton, who is great in everything, and Hugh Laurie, who is also great in everything, have joined the cast as well, according to Variety. The cast also includes Aneurin Barnard, Ben Whishaw, Morfydd Clark, Anthony Welsh, and Rosalind Eleaza.

There’s no word on who Swinton and Laurie are playing, but Patel is playing David Copperfield, who “navigates a chaotic world to find his elusive place within it.” Dicken’s David Copperfield was first published in 1850. It was Dickens’ eighth novel, and was regarded by the author as the favorite of his books. Here’s the synopsis of the novel, from the Penguin Classic edition:

David Copperfield is the novel Dickens regarded as his ‘favourite child’ and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experience from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are David’s tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his brilliant, but ultimately unworthy, school-friend Steerforth; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble, yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; and the magnificently impecunious Micawber, one of literature’s great comic creations.

Iannucci’s take will update the story to the present day, so imagine all that stuff from the synopsis above but with cellphones and Twitter, I guess. Iannucci wrote the script for The Personal History of David Copperfield with Simon Blackwell, and the Veep creator has been hoping to make the film since at least 2015.  When Iannucci’s Copperfield was first announced, Christine Langan, head of BBC Films, said:

“It’s an amazing story and Armando Iannucci is hugely passionate about it. He has a very fresh way of tackling it. He is a Dickens aficionado, so he wants it to be very authentic but it will have his own sensitivity.”

When asked about the project last year, Iannucci said:

“I’m going to be very true to the spirit of the book and use as much of Dickens’ dialogue as possible, but I want it to feel very contemporary.”

There’s no word on a release date yet.

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