House star in Bougainville for Pip film

Actor Hugh Laurie. Photo / Supplied

House star Hugh Laurie has a found a good place to hole up as his debut album Let Them Talk is released to less than widespread acclaim.

He's in Bougainville, as the filming of Mister Pip - the adaptation of Lloyd Jones' best seller by Andrew Adamson.

Laurie is there just as his New Orleans-recorded blues set Let Them Talk, with guest turns from singer Irma Thomas, Allen Toussaint, and Tom Jones, comes in for the inevitable mixed reviews. In summary: ivory tickling good; vocals not so convincing.

Mister Pip is one of the first features for Laurie since playing the title character of possibly the most popular television show on the planet for seven seasons.

For Auckland-based Adamson, who kicked off the Shrek and Narnia franchises, Mister Pip is his first independent feature and one which takes him back to Papua New Guinea where he spent part of his childhood.

Adamson adapted Jones' acclaimed story about Mr Watts (Laurie) the last white man left on the civil war-torn island of Bougainville during the 1990 blockade by Papua New Guinea. He re-opens a school and uses his favourite novel, Dickens' Great Expectations, to inspire students, particularly a gifted 14-year-old named Matilda who will be played, as will the other children, by locals.

Scenes from Great Expectations are to be filmed in Oamaru in late July, its historic streets doubling for Victorian England.

As Adamson told TimeOut last year: " It's a challenging film on so many levels . . . logistically challenging, thematically challenging ... it's dealing with two different realities. It's a beautiful story but it has quite a lot of tragedy in it and balancing all those things has been interesting."