Tim Burton brought a distinctive and unique flair to his pair of Batman movies, but as the filmmaker established his own name as a byword in Hollywood for eccentric Gothic fantasy, he embraced his reputation to continue churning out titles that kept him firmly within a wheelhouse of his own design.
It was hardly a bad thing, of course, but Burton’s strict adherence to formula yielded plenty of inconsistency, from the highs of Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd to the lows of Planet of the Apes, Dark Shadows and Big Eyes via cult favorite Mars Attacks! and the largely forgettable likes of Big Fish and Disney’s Dumbo remake.
One of his most overlooked movies, though, is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which is surprising when you consider that it’s one of the bigger box office hits of his career, raking in close to $300 million globally and scoring largely positive reviews. In fact, only five of Burton’s nineteen features managed to make more money, but the literary adaptation is rarely talked about when mentioning his back catalogue despite boasting the sort of fantastical narrative, lavish production design and imaginative set pieces that have been his stock in trade for close to 35 years.
The plot revolves around Asa Butterfield’s Jake, who follows clues left behind by his grandfather that lead him straight to the titular location, run by Eva Green’s Miss Peregrine and populated by people with strange and magical abilities that make them targets for the villainous Wights and Hollows. Samuel L. Jackson also stops by as the shapeshifting Mr. Barron, and the former 20th Century Fox title is set to be added to the Disney Plus library next month on March 12th.
