Variety reports that Fox is set to develop a movie from the 1830s period novels, Flashman, based on George MacDonald Fraser's writings. Ridley Scott's Scott Free and Peter Chernin's Chernin Entertainment will develop the project.

The Flashman character appeared in a dozen of Fraser's novels and was portrayed by Malcolm McDowell in the 1975 film "Royal Flash." The character is an antihero who often runs from danger but usually winds up being acclaimed as a hero.

Presented within the frame of the supposedly discovered historical Flashman Papers, the book describes the bully Flashman from "Tom Brown's School Days." The book begins with an explanatory note saying that the Flashman Papers were discovered in 1965 during a sale of household furniture in Ashby, Leicestershire. The papers are attributed to Harry Paget Flashman, who is not only the bully featured in Thomas Hughes' novel, but also a well-known Victorian military hero (in Fraser's fictional England). The papers were supposedly written between 1900 and 1905. The subsequent publishing of these papers, of which Flashman is the first, contrasts the previously believed exploits of a (fictional) hero with his own more scandalous account, which shows the life of a cowardly bully. Flashman begins with his own account of expulsion from Rugby and ends with his fame as "the Hector of Afghanistan", detailing his life from 1839 to 1842 and his travels to Scotland, India, and Afghanistan. It also contains a number of notes by the author, in the guise of a fictional editor, giving additional historical information on the events described. The history in these books is quite accurate; most of the people Flashman meets are real people.

George MacDonald Fraser's career spanned feature films as well, having written the screenplays for The Three Musketeers (1973), the James Bond film Octopussy 1985's Red Sonja which stars Brigitte Nielsen and Arnold Schwarzenegger.