Dumbledore Gets an Upgrade

Fans of the Harry Potter series may have been staggering about hollow-eyed after The Deathly Hallows ended five years ago. With the closure of a story that defined most of their childhoods, there doesn’t seem to have been anything to fill the void left by one of the most successful franchises of all time. It’s not likely that Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will be another Harry Potter, but the formula is in place: a book turned movie about an “ordinary” boy who discovers a world of “extraordinary” kids and realizes he’s not so ordinary after all. In fact, he is the chosen one destined to save them all from a nameless evil. Except in this case, the wizened old headmaster has been replaced with Eva Green.

This original source material by Ransom Riggs was popular on the young adult scene for about 70 weeks and has an intriguing back story. Riggs, a collector of ephemera, came across a stack of vintage photographs that seemed designed to induce nightmares. Riggs, instead, gave them all backstories, and turned them into a close-knit community of orphans with special powers and watched over by a shapeshifting headmistresss named Miss Peregrine. The lead character is led to their orphanage in his quest to discover what happened to his grandfather, who also grew up in the orphanage. What follows is a story of time warps, vicious monsters, and the beautifully strange children who huddle together in their Welsh orphanage to survive the Blitzkrieg during WWII. It’s an enjoyable tale that has enough eeriness to spare for a film adaptation, and director Tim Burton should be the right man for the job. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children opens nationwide on September 30, 2016.