MONTHS before it was published, a buzz built up in Hollywood that this was something special—a beautifully crafted story of a group of outcast children with unique abilities that would make a spectacular movie.
Released in 2011, Ransom Riggs’ debut novel “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” won a small, loyal following that, month by month, grew and propelled it on to the New York Times best seller list claiming the No. 1 spot on the Children’s Chapter Books list in 2012.
Riggs later welcomed the news that his favorite director, Tim Burton, wanted to adapt the book into a movie.
For Burton, the filmmaker who has brought us contemporary classics including “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Ed Wood,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Alice in Wonderland,” it was a story he couldn’t resist. “I loved the material,” he says.
And indeed, it has all the elements—time travel, a love story, and outsiders with unique abilities being hunted by genuinely scary monsters—that make it a classic Burton film. As soon as he read the novel, and Jane Goldman’s screenplay, he was anxious to get started.
“I don’t know if I saw the book when it first came out, but somebody sent it to me. I didn’t really know that much about it, and it was good in a way because you get something fresh where you don’t have any preconceptions about it,” said Burton.
Ransom’s book features old, haunting photographs that he has collected over the years. These images resonated with Burton, who also collects old photos.
(she sees them as her surrogate kids) are wonderfully eccentric.
“Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” stars Asa Butterfield as Jake who grows up in suburban Florida believing that he is an “ordinary kid” listening to stories told by his much adored grandfather of his time in a magical home on a Welsh island and the strange children with unique abilities who live there. Jake assumed that they were fairy tales but then a frightening chain of events leads him to believe that the home—and the “peculiar” children who lived there—might be real.
“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” is moving, scary, fun and thrilling with brilliant effects and endearing, eccentric characters and memorable villains. In short, it’s classic Tim Burton.
