The cinematic dredging of British TV continues apace, with the news that classic sitcom Dad’s Army is being given the big-screen treatment.

For younger readers (or even not-so-young readers who didn’t have parents plonking them in front of the TV perpetually insisting that “there’s a really funny bit coming”), Dad’s Army originally ran from 1968 to 1977, and told the story of an eager but inept Home Guard platoon.

There has been sporadic talk of a new Dad’s Army movie for many years, but now it sounds like it’s really happening. The programme’s co-creator Jimmy Perry said: “[It has] been in the air for a long time. Up to now I haven’t taken it too seriously… When I signed the contract to release the film rights, one provision was that I didn’t have to write anything, I didn’t have to do anything. I’m letting them get on with it.”

It has been reported that Toby Jones (Captain America, The Hunger Games, Frost/Nixon and hundreds of other things) will star as Captain Mainwaring, with Bill Nighy playing Sergeant Wilson.

Oliver Parker, who made Johnny English Reborn and St Trinian’s is in line to direct.

And you know what? I’m not offended. It sounds like it’s something that has been cooking for a long time and isn’t just a flash-decision made in the hope of generating some quick cash.

If the names being bandied about were along the lines of James Corden and Rufus Hound, I’d have a lot more to complain about. But Toby Jones and Bill Nighy are a sign to me that the film is going to at least ’try’ and be of a decent quality.

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Python show on big screen

It was originally meant to be just one show, then another nine were added, but there are still many, many, many people who missed out on tickets to see Monty Python at London’s O2 Arena.

But there’s good news, because Picturehouse Entertainment has secured the rights to screen the last date on Sunday, July 20. More than 450 screens across the UK will show the team’s final performance, with a further 1,500 cinemas around the world doing the same.

In a statement, the comedy troupe said (presumably in unison, with Eric Idle screeching his bits): “Thanks to the wonderful invention of moving pictures, The Last Night of Monty Python is coming to a cinema near you.

Join the crowd live from London’s O2 in a final weepy, hilarious, uproarious, outrageous, farewell to the five remaining Pythons as they head for The Old Jokes Home... On the big screen, in HD.”

Keep an eye on our cinema’s listings to see if it will be carrying the show.

The merry-go-round of projects Steven Spielberg is supposedly meant to direct has grown to a ridiculous size over the last couple of years. However, a big, new movie has appeared out of nowhere and apparently this is absolutely, definitely, 100% the one that he is going to make.

That movie is a live-action adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book The BFG, which Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios bought the rights to in 2011.

The 1982 book was previously adapted by ITV in 1989, with David Jason providing the voice of The Big Friendly Giant who befriends a young girl named Sophie when she catches him distributing the good dreams he collects to her and other children. However, The BFG is bullied by other, less friendly giants, who eat children, and the two team up to defeat the bad giants. It’s all very similar to series two of Auf Wiedersehn, Pet.

One of my favourite directors using one of my favourite books from one of my favourite authors – I can’t wait to see what the result is.

Don’t expect this to be the end of the “What’s Spielberg doing next?” game though.

Apparently the director is not set to start work until next year on the project, and will then target a 2016 release – which leaves him plenty of time to make something smaller before that.

The life and death of Steve Jobs is a perfect subject for a movie, but despite a handful of projects springing up in the months after his death in 2011, only one film has made much of an impact – last year’s Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher.

While that film received a lukewarm response, Apple nerds everywhere are getting excited about Sony’s planned biopic. Where once David Fincher was in line to direct, the new man at the helm is Danny Boyle, and he’s taking Leonardo DiCaprio along with him.

Danny Boyle, DiCaprio and an Aaron Sorkin script tackling one of the most polarising individuals of the last decade is something to look forward to, particularly when you consider that Sorkin’s script will be based on Walter Isaacson’s warts-and-all biography.

Movies about real people who aren’t either Nazis or slavers tend to fall into a state of semi-reverence; but with Isaacson’s book covering as much of Job’s egotistical and downright cruel side as the tech visionary’s business acumen, this could just be the balanced look at a fascinating man’s life that we have been waiting for.