From visionary director Tim Burton, and based upon the best-selling novel, comes an unforgettable motion picture experience. When Jake discovers clues to a mystery that spans alternate realities and times, he uncovers a secret refuge known as Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jake learns about the residents and their unusual abilities, he realizes that safety is an illusion, and danger lurks in the form of powerful, hidden enemies. Jake must figure out what is real, who can be trusted, and who he really is.
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN is rich with fantastical and immersive imagery, memorable characters, epic battles, and unique time travel manipulations—all brought to life by Tim Burton, in the grand style of his films Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Visionary filmmaker Tim Burton knew that he’d found his next project when he first picked up Ransom Riggs’ best selling novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.
“I don’t know if I saw the book when it first came out, but somebody sent it to me,” he says. “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.
“It felt like a discovery to me, even though it had been out for a little while. I wasn’t reacting to whatever The New York Times said – I was just sort of reacting to it, and there was something very positive about that. There were no outside influences that way, you could just respond to the book purely.”
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 of the strange children with remarkable abilities who live there.
Jake believed that the stories came straight from his grandpa’s vivid imagination but then a frightening chain of events leads him to believe that the home -– and the “peculiar” children who lived there protected by Miss Peregrine – might indeed be real and he sets out to find it.
When he does, Jake is entranced by the eccentric band of youngsters who live there, trapped in a time loop living one day in 1940 over and over again. He also discovers that – just like his grandfather before him – he has a pivotal role in keeping them safe from the evil ‘hollowgasts’ who are hunting them.
For Burton, the director who has made contemporary classics including Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Alice In Wonderland, Riggs’ story, and Jane Goldman’s screenplay, was a classic tale of outsiders trying to survive in a “normal” world. The children’s unusual abilities are not of the classic superhero variety, he points out.
“Obviously the superhero genre is alive and well, but with this I never quite saw it that way. I always felt this was a more human version of that kind of thing, and I always saw it as less of a superpower and more of an affliction,” he explains.
“Each kid had their own peculiarity, that’s what I was interested in. It wasn’t, ‘We’re going to save the world.’ It was, ‘We are who we are and this is our thing, and maybe we can help to get out of a problem, or deal with an issue.’ It was a much more down-to-earth human level to me that I was attracted to.”
The stellar cast that includes Eva Green as Miss Peregrine, Dame Judi Dench as Miss Avocet, Terence Stamp as Jake’s grandfather Abe and Samuel L. Jackson as the terrifying Barron.
Asa Butterfield (The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas, Hugo) is Jake, Ella Purnell plays Emma (who is lighter than air), Finlay Macmillan is Enoch, who can make inanimate objects come to life, and Lauren McCostie is Olive, who can create fire from her fingertips.
Burton was born in Burbank, California and began his career as an animator. His first full-length feature was Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985). His other films include Beetlejuice Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dark Shadows and Big Eyes. He has twice been nominated for an Academy Award: Best Animated Feature for Corpse Bride in 2006 and Best Animated Feature for Frankenweenie in 2012.
Customers will also get a chance to bring home a Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children paperback. To join, customers must share a photo of them with their Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children DVD and email it to [email protected]. The first 80 customers to send in their entries automatically wins.
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN is now available to own on DVD.
