The Great Escape remake planned by BBC The BBC is in the early stages of remaking the 1963 classic The Great Escape as a mini-series. The rights are currently owned by US company Open Circle, with whom the BBC has a wider deal, reports Broadcast. Their agreement with Open Circle, a small firm founded by an ex-Lionsgate executive, also covers the adaptation of Anne Holt's detective novel series. The first production lined up is understood to be her 2010 novel 1222, in which the paralysed female detective Hanne Wilhelmsen unpicks a puzzling disaster in the Norwegian mountains. The Great Escape, however, will be a more controversial collaboration: the 1963 original, a Christmas television stalwart, is widely beloved and, to many viewers, sacrosanct. But it is less well known that the Steve McQueen version is, in a sense, a remake of the 1950 British drama The Wooden Horse - the first film to portray the remarkable mass escape of allied POWs from Stalag Luft III in 1944. The two films, however, diverge from real events and each other on points of detail. It remains to be seen where the forthcoming BBC serial version will take its stand. As yet, no casting information or release date has been announced.