According to Variety, Rowan Atkinson will re-team with his Johnny English director Peter Howitt to make an updated, comical version of Charles Dickens' classic novel David Copperfield.

In the film, written by Howitt and Douglas McFerran, Atkinson will portray Mr. Micawber, Copperfield's landlord. The character is one of Dickens' most famous, and was originally played by W.C. Fields in the 1935 version.

Producer Richard Johns said about the project, "This is a very fresh adaptation of the novel, not the chocolate-boxy, stolid version of Dickens that we are used to. It won't be mannered or reverential. With Dickens, filmmakers have been trapped in this place where you have caricatured characters, but Peter wants to deal with them like real people."

David Copperfield will begin shooting in early 2008. Rowan Atkinson will next be seen in Mr. Bean's Holiday, which opens in America on August 31, 2007.