Stephen Daldry takes on ‘clunky’ My Fair Lady

Has being nominated for an Oscar for his film The Reader gone to Stephen Daldry's head? The question arises not because the British director has decided to remake one of cinema's best loved musicals of all time, My Fair Lady, but because he believes the 1964 version, which starred Audrey Hepburn (right) as the cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins, was not very good.

"It's all about Cecil Beaton's sets and costumes, isn't it? Which are fantastic - as are the songs, of course. It's a visual masterpiece - but it needs to be more than that. It's a clunky movie," he tells the Daily Mail, which also reports that he has lined up Keira Knightley (left) to play the Hepburn role.

Daldry believes that people have been 'fooled' for nearly half a century into thinking that the original film was a classic, which was heaped with prizes, including an Oscar (admittedly for Beaton's stage sets and costumes), and a Bafta and Golden Globe for best film.

While Daldry’s comments will alarm fans of the original, so too might the mooted choice of writer. The Mail reports that the film's producers, Duncan Kenworthy and Cameron Mackintosh, have approached the actress Emma Thompson to adapt the work, which was based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion.