Ahead of its February production start, Fox has opted to give Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiars, an adaptation of Ransom Riggs’ novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, more time to fully coalesce. Shortly after shifting Ridley Scott’s The Martian up to November 2015, the studio has announced that Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiars will take that film’s former March 4th, 2016 release date.
It’s not an unexpected move, considering that Burton hasn’t yet filled out his cast for the supernatural fantasy film. Eva Green, who previously co-starred in Burton’s uneven Dark Shadows adaptation, is currently in talks for the lead role, the teacher of a group of mysterious children with extraordinary abilities (two of whom are pictured above in an image taken from Riggs’ book), but she’s the only actress whose name has even been mentioned in association with the project.
Additionally, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiars is expected to have a distinctively Gothic feel (in keeping with Riggs’ book), and Burton has likely been so busy with this year’s Big Eyes, his Oscar contender starring Amy Adams, that he hasn’t had too much time to consider how he wants this next project to look.
Riggs’ novel follows a teenage boy who travels to a mysterious island following his grandfather’s unexpected death. There, he finds a group of orphans with extraordinary powers, individuals who his grandfather told him stories of but whom the boy never believed to be real. After meeting the orphans’ enigmatic headmaster, he works to protect his new acquaintances from creatures out to destroy them.
X-Men: First Class writer Jane Goldman adapted the script for the movie, which is still on track to roll cameras in February. Burton will need to cast many young actors in the roles of the assorted peculiars, so expect to see several unknown names emerge with respect to that.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiars will now open on March 4th, 2016. It’s currently sharing the date with a Disney animated film titled Zootopia, from the c0-director of Bolt and Tangled.
