It’s been seven long years since Benh Zeitlin released his feature directorial debut, Beasts Of The Southern Wild. Next February, Zeitlin finally returns with his sophomore feature, Wendy—and based on the trailer, he’s making a pretty strong case for why you should give a crap about yet another reimagining of Peter Pan. Zeitlin and his younger sister Eliza Zeitlin co-wrote the screenplay for Wendy, which was filmed on an island south of Antigua. The story follows the eponymous protagonist, a young girl who is kidnapped and taken away to an island where a mysterious pollen has disrupted the cycles of age and time. That almost sounds like a Peter Pan story by way of Shane Carruth—a comparison that doesn’t appear to be that far off, given how long Zeitlin has spent working on Wendy.
Way back in 2013, the filmmaker described his Peter Pan project to the New York Times:
It follows a friendship-love story-adventure of her and a joyous, reckless, pleasure-mongering young boy as they swirl in and out of youth and as the ecosystem around them spirals toward destruction. We’re working on it all day every day, but as all psychotic adventures go, you know where your destination is but not how long it’s going to take to get there.
The answer is six or seven years, apparently. Wendy will hit theaters on February 28, 2020.