Tim Burton

If you’re anything like me, it’s probably been a while since you were really excited for a Tim Burton movie. While movies like Big Eyes, Dark Shadows, and Alice in Wonderland all did either OK with critics or at the box office, Burton has made too many wonderful movies in his career for “OK” to feel like anything other than a disappointment. Thankfully, Burton seems to be back on track with Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, a YA adaptation that brings together the conflict of the X-Men with the sense of childish wonder that only Burton can bring to bear.

The current Broadway listings read like a video store restock list: Aladdin, The Color Purple, Finding Neverland, Holiday Inn, Kinky Boots, The Lion King, Matilda, School of Rock, and more. Movies are big business on Broadway, and there are more adaptations coming all the time; upcoming movie-based shows include A Bronx Tale, Amelie, Anastasia, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That last one is technically based on the book by Roald Dahl, which has already been adapted twice for film; once by Mel Stuart and once by Tim Burton. This, as it turns out, is not the only Burton movie that could soon be playing on the Great White Way.

Tim Burton has been a bit hit or miss in his later years (to say the least), but his latest film looks like it might possibly, hopefully be the closest thing to a return to form since Frankenweenie. A new featurette encourages that optimism by taking you inside the fantastical world of Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children — come for Eva Green, stay for charmingly creepy little kids in burlap sacks.

Ender’s Game sputtered out and he didn’t land the role of Marvel’s new Spider-Man, so Asa Butterfield’s latest stab at franchise immortality will come in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Based on a best-selling novel by Ransom Riggs, the premise is sort of a Tim Burton spin on X-Men, with a house of strange and quirkily gifted children who live apart from society that doesn’t understand their abilities. And, yes, if this movie is a hit, Riggs has already written two Miss Peregrine sequels, Hollow City and Library of Souls. In other words, there’s nothing peculiar about Hollywood’s interest in this material.

I’m a sucker for themed food and drinks, especially when it comes to movies. I once cooked a Louisiana-style feast with a friend around ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild,’ served hamburgers and Sunny-D for a group screening of ‘Juno,’ and crepes for one of ‘Midnight in Paris.’ So it only made sense that I jumped at the opportunity to check out the new Tim Burton-themed restaurant with a group of fellow film writers on Monday night.

Tim Burton’s already made his comic-book movie; 1989’s Batman, which practically invented modern superhero cinema. And his next movie, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, is inspired by a novel by Ransom Riggs. But damn if the first trailer doesn’t make it look like Burton’s spin on the X-Men; where he takes the idea of this secret society of outsiders and makes them all vaguely creepy and Victorian and stuff.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children just sounds like a Tim Burton movie, doesn’t it? Well, it is.

We’re a little over four months from the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which will launch a whole new world of films into our lives: the DC Cinematic Universe. Spinning out of the events of 2013’s Man of Steel, it will pit Henry Cavill’s Superman against Ben Affleck’s Batman, and put both characters on the path toward a massive two-part film about DC’s heavy-hitting super-team, the Justice League of America, which will also feature the exploits of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), the Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and more.

The new promotional clip for the follow-up to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, clocking in at a whopping eleven seconds, does actually feel like it’s teasing us with its tantalizing brevity and refusal to surrender any actual information. The word “teaser” has never felt more appropriate.

Although it’s far from an actual trailer (or even a real teaser, for that matter), we do have our first inkling of what’s in store with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Tim Burton’s adaptation of the beloved Ransom Riggs novel of the same name. If you’re a fan of that book, then you’re aware that September 3 (that would be today, guys) has some significance in the story as “Loop Day,” and the first teaser honors it accordingly.