20th Century Fox has picked up the rights to Agatha Christie’s classic 1934 murder-mystery Murder on the Orient Express, hiring Ridley Scott (Prometheus), Simon Kinberg (X-Men: First Class) and Mark Gordon (Saving Private Ryan) to produce.
Murder on the Orient Express first reached the screen in 1974 under director Sidney Lumet and saw Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, alongside an all-star cast which included Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins and Ingrid Bergman in an Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actress turn. CBS also produced a made-for-TV movie version in 2001 featuring Alfred Molina, while ITV adapted the book as part of its Poirot series with David Suchet in 2010.
Fox is currently searching for writers on the project, and at present its unknown whether the film will retain the period setting or transport the action to the present day.
