Jennifer Garner as Miss Marple ruffles feathers at Agatha Christie estate

Brad Sturdivant March 30th, 2011

Yesterday it was reported that Disney and Jennifer Garner had acquired the rights to author Agatha Christie’s character Miss Marple and that Garner was set to produce and apparently star in the film as a younger version of the aging detective. Today however, Chorion which is a British company that owns the rights to Agatha Christie’s estate has come out to say that a deal is not firmly in place, implying that they may back out of the deal completely. A biographer to Agatha Christie has openly stated that the author would not be pleased to see that her most famous character was getting a face-lift so to speak. In fact, the author openly criticized a previous rendition of Miss Marple that was done by Margaret Rutherford in the 1950’s saying, “Why don’t they just invent a new character? Then they can have their cheap fun and leave me and my creations alone.” Chorion doesn’t appear to be giving a lot of details about what their next move is, but we’ll let you know.

I was under the impression that Garner was just going to be producing and not starring and now that that’s all cleared up I hope this film won’t be able to move forward. I personally can’t stand when my favorite characters from books are brought to the big screen and butchered, and I wouldn’t wish that on any Miss Marple fan.

Jennifer Garner