Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie Reunite for Big Screen Animation

Former comedy duo Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are to re-unite for the first time in 13 years to lend their voice skills to CG animated movie project The Canterville Ghost.

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The duo, now two of the biggest stars on the small screen on both sides of the Atlantic, will play opposite each other in the adaptation of the classic story from Oscar Wilde.

Fry stars as the title character, Sir Simon de Canterville, a 300 year old ghost, while Laurie stars as his nemesis, a lowly gardener who is revealed to be Death himself.

Set in rural England at the end of the nineteenth century, it tells the tale of Canterville who, for hundreds of years has been haunting Canterville Chase. Everything changes when an American family - the Otises from Boston - buys Canterville Chase and moves in.

Director Kim Burdon said the project would be CG animated rather than stop-capture likeness and is based on an adaptation penned by Keiron Self and Giles New.

The film is being produced by Gina Carter and Robert Chandler as a Melmoth Films production making it a co-production between Fry’s own Sprout Pictures Film and Jerry Hibbert’s startup animation company D’Arblay Films. Hibbert, Bob Benton and Fry will all take executive producer credits.

Plans are for it to be animated in London and Toronto, with direction, designs and storyboards from D’Arblay Films in the U.K. and CG animation from Arc Productions, the studio behind Shane Acker’s 9 and Rocket Pictures’ Gnomeo & Juliet, in Canada.

Producers are shopping the project as a family feature and are aiming for a worldwide release Christmas 2014, buyer-willing.

The project's development has been backed by the BFI Film Fund.