Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day) will direct the motion picture that details the creation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Mozart in the Jungle’s Susan Coyne wrote the screenplay.

The cast will be led by several theatre veterans, including Tony winners Christopher Plummer (Barrymore, Cyrano) and Jonathan Pryce (Miss Saigon) as, respectively, Scrooge and Dickens’ father. Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens, who made his Broadway debut in the recent revival of The Heiress, will play the young Dickens.

The story, according to the industry website, begins in the fall of 1843, “when Dickens was broke and distressed with his previous three books having failed. Rejected by his publishers, he set out to write and self-publish a book he hoped would keep his family afloat, and after six fever-pitched weeks, he created A Christmas Carol.”

Production on The Man Who Invented Christmas is scheduled to commence next month prior to a release in 2017.

“The Man Who Invented Christmas is an emotionally rich story of Dickens’ creative process and illustrates his love of the holiday spirit,” Andrew Karpen, Bleecker Street’s CEO, told Deadline. “We look forward to bringing Bharat’s film to audiences for the 2017 holiday season.”