‘Pan’ trailer teases Peter Pan’s origin story
Peter Pan is having a moment. With a little more than a week to go till NBC’s staging of “Peter Pan Live,†Warner Bros. has released a teaser trailer for “Pan,†the Joe Wright-directed origin tale about the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.
Judging by the 2½-minute video, above, “Pan†will look to differentiate itself from other Peter Pan screen incarnations — including the NBC special and Disney’s classic 1953 animated movie — with a darker tone and a story that plucks its hero (played by Levi Miller) from a grubby Edwardian orphanage and drops him into Neverland for the first time.
It’s a band of pirates who actually do the plucking, kidnapping Peter and some of his fellow orphans and transporting them home on a floating frigate. Leading the pirates is a familiar face, but probably not the one you’re expecting: It’s Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), not Peter’s classic nemesis Captain Hook.
Hook does show up in the trailer, played by Garrett Hedlund, but he’s not a captain yet — just James Hook — and curiously enough, he’s on Peter’s side (for now, at least). Also making an appearance is Rooney Mara as the tribal princess Tiger Lily, who may have an inkling of the boy’s potential.
Among all the players, though, the most interesting could be Wright himself, who’s known as a director of artful period dramas (“Pride & Prejudice,†“Anna Kareninaâ€) but isn’t a stranger to adolescent action heroes, having made 2011’s “Hanna.â€
Whether and how’s he’s able to weave those genres together will be revealed when “Pan†hits theaters July 17.
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