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Elysian Film Group has debuted a new trailer for his follow-up to Benh Zeitlin’s Oscar-nominated film ‘Beasts of The Southern Wild’, ‘Wendy.’

The film follows the classic story of Peter Pan which is wildly reimagined in this ragtag epic starring a stunning cast of young actors, headlined by Devin France in the title role of Wendy.

While lost on a mysterious island where ageing and time have come unglued, Wendy must fight to save her family, her freedom, and the joyous spirit of youth from the deadly peril of growing up.

Photo Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

Directed and written by Zeitlin alongside his sister Eliza Zeitlin, he wanted to capture and reinvent the childhood myth that had captivated him and his sister. Rather than Peter’s story, their tale focuses on Wendy who experiences Neverland but has to leave it behind.

Over the last few years the “Mouse House” has gone “all in” on doing live-action remakes of their Animated features film classics. Now we’re not talking about the Pixar flicks, though CGI has certainly been enlisted to give the more fantastic elements. Though it stuns me to say it, kudos to the Hollywood Foreign Press and their Golden Globe awards for pointing out that one such remake was not “live-action” but rather a computer-animated feature. These raids of the Disney “vault” target mainly their 1937 to mid-1990s output. Last year was almost a deluge with digital “re-do’s” of Dumbo, Aladdin, and The Lion King, with Lady And The Tramp streaming on the Disney+ app. Ah, but one hasn’t been “tech’d up”. Maybe because it originated in live-action, on stage because unlike most of the classic fairy tales it’s just a bit over a century old.

Wendy director Benh Zeitlin on Liza Minnelli’s scream (as Sally Bowles) the moment the train goes by in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret: "I’ve always loved that moment. That character is so wild, like such a great ferocious liberated woman character.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In the final instalment of my in-depth conversation with Benh Zeitlin at the Bowery Hotel in New York, we discussed how he developed a relationship between Shay Walker (mother Angela Darling) and Tommie Lynn Milazzo, who plays her baby Wendy, casting the twins Gavin Naquin and Gage Naquin, and working with his sister Eliza Zeitlin on their “shared vision” for Wendy, shot by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen (Josephine Decker’s Shirley) and starring Devin France as the adolescent Wendy.

Devin France, Gavin Naquin, Gage Naquin, Romyri Ross, and Yashua Mack in Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy

Herbert Brenon’s 1924 silent Peter Pan, my favourite adaptation of Jm Barrie’s play,...

Chicago – The Peter Pan mythos is as well known as any legend, ever since J.M. Barrie invented the character in 1904. Through nearly a hundred versions in virtually all media, the theme remains the same … what happens if we never grow up. Benh Zeitlin adds his spin in “Wendy,” the follow-up to his Oscar nominated “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (2012).

The Explorer: Devin France is the Title Character in ‘Wendy’

Photo credit: Searchlight Pictures

“Wendy” focuses on the title character, portrayed with wide-eyed wonder by Devin France. She is portrayed as the modern-day daughter of a single mother, flanked by her twin brothers Douglas and James (Gage and Gavin Naquin). The austere family lives by a train depot, and the three siblings are tempted by a mysterious child rail rider named Peter (Yashua Mack) to run away. They travel to a mysterious island, where the inhabitants never grow up. The...

The specialty box office is headed towards the second star on the right and straight on till morning with Benh Zeitlin’s magical adventure Wendy, a fresh reimagination of J. M. Barrie’s classic tale of Peter Pan. The pic from Searclight Pictures is Zeitlin’s follow up to his Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild which was released in 2012.

Co-written by Zeitlin and his sister Eliza, Wendy isn’t necessarily cut from the same cloth from Disney animated feature, rather it speaks to Zeitlin’s hyperealstic aesthtetic. The film, which debuted at Sundance earlier this year, stars newcomer Devin France in the titular role of Wendy, based on the heroine Wendy Darling of Peter Pan. In Zeitlin’s vision of Neverland, Wendy and her friends get whisked away by a boy named Peter where they get lost on a mysterious island where no one ages and time stands still.

Wendy director Benh Zeitlin on the Montserrat volcano: "Every time I would go back there I had to rewrite the script because things would just be growing at this rate that’s exponential. It’s so fertile and so alive.”

Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy, a free-range take on Jm Barrie’s classic story of Peter Pan, co-written with his sister Eliza Zeitlin, who is also the production designer, has Wendy Darling living with her single mother (Shay Walker) and twin brothers James and Douglas (Gavin Naquin and Gage Naquin) above the diner they run right by the railroad tracks in rural Louisiana.

Beasts Of The Southern Wild and Wendy director Benh Zeitlin (with Anne-Katrin Titze) on nature: "There are things on this Earth that are so awesome, they’re unexplainable the same way magic is.” Photo: Sam Fetner

One night, the three kids hop on the roof of a freight train,...

Back in 2012, a young filmmaker by the name of Benh Zeitlin burst on to the scene with Beasts of the Southern Wild. Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival, the movie blew away audiences, going on to be a darling of the awards season, even scoring four Academy Award nominations. Zeitlin himself picked up a pair of Oscar nods (Best Director and Best Original Screenplay), firmly entrenching him as someone to watch out for. What would he do next? Well, it took until Sundance 2020 for his follow up to arrive, and now Wendy hits theaters this week. Unfortunately, while his unique aesthetic is still very much in evidence, there are diminishing returns this time around. Overly familiar, unfocused, and grindingly repetitive, this is very much a misfire from Zeitlin. The film is a retelling of Peter Pan, with the gritty and grounded, yet fantastical, approach that Beasts of the Southern Wild also employed.

Is it worse to be bored or to be annoyed by a lack of ambition? What’s more grating: toe-curlingly twee humor or the type of writing that assumes a child using mild profanity is quirky? And why, of all times, would someone bunch all of these up and make it into a Peter Pan story in 2020? J. M. Barrie’s story has graced the screen a multitude of times as well as on other media, and it isn’t one that begs for another adaptation.

If it were to work, it would need a radically different perspective. It’d also need to toy with its characters, maybe even smudge their identities. The script would have to mix up the location and, while keeping ahold of the themes, adjust them to a different ethos. The performances would have to be solid, and while it’s an admittedly tough ask for something with so many children,...

by  Abe Fried-Tanzer

Eight years ago, director Benh Zeitlin, just twenty-nine at the time, brought his debut feature Beasts of the Southern Wild to Sundance, where it took home the Grand Jury Dramatic Prize. It went on to score four Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture and a bid for directing for Zeitlin. Since then, he has produced a few projects, but now marks the much-anticipated release of his second effort behind the camera.

Wendy is a creative retelling of the Peter Pan story, with Wendy (Devin France) and her twin brothers (Gage and Gavin Naquin) helping their single mother at the diner where she works and watching excitedly as trains go by their windows every night...

Beasts of the Southern Wild director Benh Zeitlin returns with an overlong and sometimes excruciating update of the Pan story

Wendy, a spin on Jm Barrie’s Peter Pan myth, takes all the chaos, noise and lack-of-focus of director Benh Zeitlin’s earlier picture Beasts of the Southern Wild and amplifies it. The 2012 surprise hit, which went from Sundance discovery to four Academy Award nominations, got a tremendous amount of mileage from its peculiarity of place and heartfelt father-daughter relationship. That’s very much missing here. What we’re left with is something like Spike Jonze’s 2009 adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are without the adorable creatures. Wendy is undoubtedly self-assured and in-your-face, and the gorgeous location photography certainly has an impact. But it’s wrecked by chapters so lengthy they become simply excruciating.

We begin with a tense scene in a greasy spoon diner loaded with crusty characters...