A consortium of BBC Films and the UK Film Council and Newcastle-based Headline Pictures have acquired the film rights to the official sequel to JM Barrie's Peter Pan.

Geraldine McCaughrean was commissioned to write Peter Pan In Scarlet last October by London children's hospital Great Ormond Street (GOSH), which holds the copyright to the classic.

"We have no doubt that they will help to build on the ongoing success of Geraldine McCaughrean's brilliant sequel which will continue to raise vital funds for GOSH in the way JM Barrie had intended when he gifted the copyright to Peter Pan to the Hospital," said Charles Denton, Executive Director of Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity.

"We firmly believe that our three companies can really combine effectively to do justice to a project of such scale and ambition," said Stewart Mackinnon of Headline Pictures.