There’s a lot of anticipation for Tim Burton’s big screen adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. And after a time-focused teaser that raised more questions than answers, the film’s first official trailer finally gives a sense of what to expect. Asa Butterfield plays Jake, a young boy who is introduced to a fanciful world of “peculiar” children. Among those gifted youngsters is Ella Purnell’s Emma Bloom, who has the ability to manipulate air, as well as kids with standard superpowers like invisibility, super strength, and unusually placed mouths. These quirky orphans are watched over by Eva Green’s Miss Peregrine, the Professor X-like figure who can also turn into a bird because this trailer didn’t have enough going on already.
It’s a little difficult to tell just how much Jane Goldman’s screenplay has changed from Ransom Riggs’ original novel. For instance, in the book Emma controls fire, not air (her abilities appear to have been swapped with a more minor character’s power set for the film). The biggest unknown is Samuel L. Jackson’s “Mr. Barron,” a character created for the film who looks fairly villainous in his brief appearance in the trailer. Presumably all will be revealed in appropriately whimsical fashion when Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children hits theaters September 30, 2016. Until then, the film’s official poster will have to do.