Given the socially turbulent time period in which the tale is set (fighting at the barricades, anyone?), the movie version produced by Working Title Films is likely to be a big-budget experience teeming with "a cast of thousands," as they used to say in old Hollywood. The stage musical with a score by Alain Boublil (book), Claude-Michel Schönberg (book and music) and Herbert Kretzmer (lyrics) is based on the classic Victor Hugo novel in which moral hero Jean Valjean is pursued through the years by Inspector Javert, brushing up against French history.

Hooper's film credit before the Best Picture-nominated "The King's Speech" was "The Damned United," about an English football coach. He was also director of the acclaimed miniseries "John Adams."

In Playbill.com's Jan. 29 Brief Encounter interview, Les Miz's theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh, who is also planning to produce a new movie version of My Fair Lady, said that progress on "Les Miz," the film, is "going very well. I think that may well be the first one [to happen]. …It just smells like it's in the right track at the moment. But it's the movie business, which is not like the theatre. In the theatre business, you go, 'Yeah, I'm going to do this,' and you set a date and do it. [The movie] business does not work that way."