What? Rupert Everett in the part made immortal by Alastair Sim? It can't be true. But if it is, the remains of the commercial British film industry has to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.
No disrespect intended as far as Everett is concerned. He is a more than capable actor and, potentially at least, a comedian of some resource. But Sim, of the grimacing face, the down-turned lips and upturned eyes, he is not, and never will be.
And who, pray, are going to play the parts dished up with absolute perfection by Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Hermione Baddeley, Joan Sims and Beryl Reid in The Belles of St Trinian's?
We all know what happened when they tried to revive the Carry On series with modern farceurs. Carry On Columbus was a flop, and deservedly so. We also know the 1980s' attempted revival of the St Trinian's series as a stinker too. The Wildcats of St Trinian's was described at the time as "weekend wet dreams for suburbia".
Will this 21st century venture into the past prove any more worth it than Columbus or Wildcats? I very much doubt it, unless it's pretty cleverly brought up to date. Perhaps it will be. One shouldn't knock down something that hasn't even stood up for inspection. But it does seem that the St Trinian's series was a product of its times when nubile girls were not thought to be a danger to either themselves or others, and when schooldays were thought to be ripe for madcap parody rather than a forcing house for exam results.
It all started in 1950 when Frank Launder's The Happiest Days Of Your Lives hit the screen running, and has hit our telly screens regularly ever since. That cast Sim as the headmaster of a boys' private school suddenly invaded by Margaret Rutherford's equally select girls' school, owing to civil service blundering. A classic, I think.
It was then decided to twist the storyline a bit and have Sim in drag as a bumbling headmistress and George Cole as the spiv of spivs. The trick, called The Belles of St Trinian's, worked at the box-office. Frank Launder and Sydney Gilliat, who shared the writing chores as well as producing and directing, simply had to go on.
They never repeated the freshness of either The Happiest Days or The Belles, though each succeeding film had its moments. The last was The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery in 1965. Then there was silence for 14 years until Wildcats.
Another 23 years will have passed before Everett tries his hand.
Derek Malcolm is a Guardian film writer
