The Ultimate Peter Pan

JM Barrie is something of a hot property of late. Marc Forster is revisiting the author's life along in JM Barrie's Neverland a biographical tale about the events leading to his writing Peter Pan, but by all accounts it's PJ Hogan's full-on adaptation of the author's famous book that will really turn the heads. Talking to star, Olivia Williams, Empire Online got the low-down on Hogan's version of the classic story. "It's the PJ Hogan take, which I think is a fantastic one," she enthused. "He's gone right back to JM Barrie's play and book and taken the great lines that we all love from when we were kids." After the debacle that was Hook, it's a brave man who returns to Neverland but Hogan, it would appear, knows exactly what he's doing. "He has a fantastic twinkly imagination for colour and fantasy but also a great eye for satire. He's totally nailed the amateur psychology of Mr Darling, the children's father, being Captain Hook, who is their worst nightmare. It's all done very tongue-in-cheek but absolutely faithful to JM Barrie. Even the lines are all Barrie." Scheduled for a Christmas release, Peter Pan will bring the magic of the boy who never grew up - played by frighteningly talented Frailty star, Jeremy Sumpter - to a new generation of children. "The kids in the film are really kids," reassures Williams, "it's not some forty-year-old playing a child. It's going to be the kiddie movie that parents want to take their children to, rather than sitting in the cinema reading their paper with a torch, which is what my dad used to do. "I think it's Peter Pan as it should be, which has never been done before."