Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Casting Update

If you believe the Variety report, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” may actually go into production early next year. I don't know — it's been in Tim Burton's hopper for a helluva long time — I wrote my first post about the adaptation in November of 2011! Even then author Ransom Riggs wasn't optimistic about the actuality of the book making its' way to the screen, but knew it hinged on having the right people, especially the right director, attached

They have a very clear idea [that] they want to get a big filmmaker in to drive the project because a lot of books get optioned, and a minority of those books actually get made. So if, I don't know, Tim Burton wanted to do it, I would be like, "That's great!" And that would give the book such a better chance of getting made! I think he'd do a fantastic job.  

Jane Goldman wrote the script, and Burton has been on board for awhile but had to make Big Eyes first — that's the film starring Amy Adams as Margaret Keene, the artist behind those 'big eyes' paintings with Christoph Waltz as her machiavellian credit-taking husband, due out Christmas Day.

While they're woefully behind their targeted release date of summer 2015, casting is tightening up with Eva Green (Penny Dreadful, Casino Royale, Sin City, White Bird in a Blizzard) on to play Miss Peregrine, the guardian of the orphans aka 'Peculiar Children'. Now Asa Butterfield and Ella Purnell are in negotiations to play the young male and female leads.

Butterfield is well known in our little book-to-movies world having starred in Hugo, Ender's Game and the upcoming adaptation of Ten Thousand Saints, in which Ethan Hawkes plays his dad (above).

Purnell was the young Malificent in the Disney film, and a very young Ruth in 2010's Never Let Me Go when she was just fourteen.

That's a movie worth re-watching if only for the fun of seeing Keira Knightly, Carey Mullins and Andrew Garfield when they seemed so much younger than they do now.  You can also catch Domhnall Gleeson  (Harry Potter, Frank, Unbroken) in the trailer! Gleeson, bound for stardom in Brooklyn as well as the next Star Wars film is currently shooting The Revenent  based on the book by Michael Punke and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy along with Will Poulter.