So many literary adaptations prove to be monumental disappointments once they’re unveiled onscreen, but we’ve got high hopes for the match-up of director Martin Scorsese with Brian Selznick’s excellent 2007 children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. According to Variety, Scorsese has officially signed on to the adaptation and will be filming it in 3-D:

Kick-Ass star Chloe Moretz, Asa Butterfield, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Sacha Baron Cohen are among the cast for the Sony Pictures movie.

Hugo Cabret will be Scorsese’s first kid’s film and his first to be released in 3-D. Production begins in London this summer for a December 9, 2011 release.

Though Scorsese’s most recent literary adaptation, Shutter Island, was a sad waste of time and talent (it did perform well at the box office, however), there’s reason to believe that Hugo Cabret will turn out differently. The book is a cinematic combination of prose and lovingly detailed charcoal drawings, and the plot hinges around a mysterious old man who turns out to be Georges Méliès, one of the founding fathers of cinema. If you know Scorsese, you know he worships at the shrine of his cinematic forbears, so it’s hard to imagine he won’t put his whole heart and soul into this project. (And the 3-D approach actually sounds appropriate for once.)