When Hanna director Joe Wright first stated that his upcoming fairytale adventure Pan “isn’t exactly the Neverland story you know,” he certainly wasn’t fooling around. As an origin tale orbiting around Peter Pan — the famous wartime orphan — the filmmaker’s approach undoubtedly takes a few creative liberties from J.M. Barrie’s original play.
For one, Pan won’t pit our titular hero against the renown Captain Hook; rather, the overarching big bad will be played by Hugh Jackman’s balding, tyrannical pirate Blackbeard. And so, this makes way for TRON: Legacy star Garrett Hedlund to embody a more friendly rendition of Hook, working aboard Blackbeard’s ship as a member of the ragtag crew.
And all of these innate tweaks and changes can be glimpsed in the film’s first trailer, which Warner Bros. debuted just this morning following up on yesterday’s character posters.
That said, the core tenets of Pan remain largely untouched; Levi Miller’s Peter is an orphan just getting by in the dark days of World Ward II when he is abruptly kidnapped by Blackbeard and brought to the mystical realm of Neverland. Upon his arrival, he soon discovers that he has a much larger role to play as he spearheads a rebellion to overthrow Jackson’s villainous outlaw.
Joining Miller, Jackson and Hedlund for the fantasy tale are Amanda Seyfried and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘s Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily.
Pan will whisk audiences young and old to Neverland when it arrives in theaters on July 17, 2015. In the meantime, you can let us know your early impressions of Joe Wright’s visualization in the comments below.
