Her Gone Life

With 20th Century Fox film "Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children" opening in theaters on Friday, I looked forward to my press junket interview with Ransom Riggs, Author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children book series.

Note: I was invited as media to the movie screening and press junket interviews. Any personal views expressed are always 100% my own.

Since "Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children" started as a book, what inspired the storytelling?

Ransom Riggs: Since I was a kid, I have been in love with doors to other worlds stories, C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, Tolkien, Stephen King does that a lot. And I've been writing since I was a kid, and it was always a story about finding another world hidden within our own. I always gravitated towards stories about worlds that are part of ours that you just haven't found the door to yet.

I love the idea that fantasy world has a foot in reality. And you could go there if you could just find the door, find the portal, find the way in, say the magic words. You could be there.

Ransom Riggs: The plot is like a soup of all the geeky things that I love in one story, the time travel, monsters, silly British humor and a bit of my childhood growing up in Florida.

I wanted to tell a story about a boy who found a real portal to another place, to a special place. And the photographs were really just sort of a way into that story. I've been trying to tell that story in various ways for a long time, because they hold a lot of mystery when you look at them. And so, I thought it would be cool if they were the breadcrumbs of a real mystery.

Visiting the film set and seeing the book brought to life

Ransom Riggs: It was really surreal. I got to visit the set a number of times over the course of filming, and the shoot was long. It was like nine months.

They started in Florida. They moved to the coast of England, and they shot in studios, and then they did Belgium because the house was in Belgium. And that was a very special and surreal thing because they actually shot in a real house. Miss Peregrine's house is a real place in Belgium. It's only like five miles away from the house that I used for the book trailer.

Ransom Riggs: And just being able to walk through a real house that had been decorated by the set designers and festooned with props and all of the detail, there was so much detail in the movie that you can't even see as a viewer because it like exists around the edges.

So, being able to walk through in person and see that with your own eyes was, for me, really strange and cool.

Feeling about original story being changed for a screenplay

Well, it helps when the person changing it is a director you've looked up to for 25 years. If it had been anyone else, I might have been more nervous. But, I went to grad film school and I'm a total film nerd, and I've written screenplays.

I've dabbled enough I think, to have a good perspective on how much work needs to be done and adaptation to make it a genuinely satisfying cinema experience that stands alone as a movie. So, I totally respect that. I just try and remove myself as the author and say, "Am I enjoying this as a movie?" And, yes, absolutely, I think it works so well.

SYNOPSIS

From visionary director Tim Burton, and based upon the best-selling novel, comes an unforgettable motion picture experience.

When Jake discovers clues to a mystery that spans alternate realities and times, he uncovers a secret refuge known as Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

As he learns about the residents and their unusual abilities, Jake realizes that safety is an illusion, and danger lurks in the form of powerful, hidden enemies. Jake must figure out who is real, who can be trusted, and who he really is.

Starring: Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Chris O'Dowd, Ella Purnell, Allison Janney, Rupert Everett, Terence Stamp, with Judi Dench and Samuel L. Jackson

Directed By: Tim Burton

Visit the website - www.foxmovies.com/miss-peregrines-home-for-peculiar-children