Great Expectations is one of the more popular Dickens novels that usually gets rehashed by the BBC for its season of Christmas TV adaptations every five years or so.

But director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time) is giving it a feature length treatment in his new film which will, unsurprisingly, be released in the winter.

This first trailer shows off a number of elements, including Helena Bonham Carter as a very Burton-esque Miss Havisham and Ralph Fiennes  as ex-con and benefactor Abel Magwitch.

Jeremy Irvine stars as Pip and Holliday Grainger features as the cold-hearted Estella with whom he becomes obsessed.

Early impressions suggest that this will be a fairly standard retelling of the story rendered in the classic novel, which will be something of a shame for those who have become fatigued by its traditional retelling on the screen.

Of course if you watch the trailer then you’ll see the entire plot, spoilers and all, played out before you, so people who are unfamiliar with the source material might want to look away.

It’s a shame that directors and writers don’t feel the compulsion to play around with settings and setups for Dickens’ material as they do with Shakespeare, because this would at least give us some varied adaptations rather than the same costume drama with a different cast each time.