Word arrived in September that Tim Burton was looking to hire Ender’s Game star Asa Butterfield for his next project, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. Butterfield has now been offered the role, and Maleficent’s Ella Purnell is also in negotiations.
Based on Ransom Riggs’ novel, which Chernin Entertainment bought for 20th Century Fox back in 2011, the story follows 16 year-old Jacob (Butterfield), who has grown up hearing tales of the titular orphanage’s odd residents from his grandfather. They included a girl who always floated slightly above the ground, another who could safely hold fire in her hands and twins who had a psychic connection.
When his granddad suddenly dies, leaving behind a message for his grandson, Jacob makes the trip to the ancestral home on a strange island off the coast of Wales. There he also finds the remains of Miss Peregrine’s place and discovers that some of those who lived there might not have left. Not only does the orphanage still exist, sort of, but its strange inhabitants are under threat from dark forces.
Eva Green is set as Miss Peregrine and Burton wants to kick off shooting early next year. Butterfield has worked on indie dramas** X+Y** and** Ten Thousand Saints**, neither of which have UK release slots.
Purnell has been carving out something of a career playing younger versions of characters, between Maleficent and her upcoming role as the teenaged Jane in Tarzan, which will swing into cinemas here sometime in 2016, but here she gets to create a character - presumably Emma, a girl who controls fire - for herself.