A new trilogy of films based on Heidi, the alpine Swiss heroine of Joanna Spyri’s popular children’s stories, is heading to multiplexes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Indian firm Vistaar Entertainment is backing three new films to be put together by UK production company Big Tree Productions. The first movie, tentatively titled Heidi – Queen of the Mountains, is expected to hit cinemas in mid 2016. Written by Paul Watson and produced by Big Tree’s Simon Wright, it will be shot on location in the Swiss Alps later this year.
“We are very excited about working on bringing to life one of the children’s best classics along with Simon and Paul,” said Vistaar managing director Sheetal Vinod Talwar in a statement. “We believe that this will be a film that will allow audiences to relive this classic and this adaptation will allow the new generation of children to fall in love with the character all over.”
Spyri’s 1881 novel Heidi is one of the bestselling children’s books of all time and is considered a classic of Swiss literature. It tells how the orphaned young girl is sent to live with her curmudgeonly grandfather in the Swiss alps, where the pair learn to love each others’ company and Heidi befriends a local goatherd named Peter. Later, the child is sent to be a companion to an invalid child in Frankfurt but begins to pine for her personal Alpine utopia and is eventually allowed to return home.
The book, originally published in two parts, has been adapted dozens of times for film and television. The best known big screen iteration is the 1937 Hollywood version, starring Shirley Temple as Heidi. A 2005 version featured Max Von Sydow as Grandfather, Emma Bolger as Heidi and Diana Rigg as Grandmamma. A separate German language version was recently filmed by France’s StudioCanal and is due to hit cinemas in December.
