Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland is an Academy Award-winning film which was released in 2004, starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and Freddie Highmore. It is a semi-fictional account of the experiences of Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie that led him to write the children's classic. In the movie, he befriends a young widow, and more importantly, her sons, and their experiences together give him the ideas for a story about boys who do not want to grow up. The film is directed by Marc Forster, who previously was responsible for Monster's Ball. The screenplay was adapted by David Magee from the play The Man Who Was Peter Pan by Allan Knee. It features a song written by Elton John. The film also stars Dustin Hoffman, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell, and Freddie Highmore. Finding Neverland was originally scheduled to be released in the fall of 2003, but Columbia Pictures, which had the film rights to Barrie's play, which it was adapting for theatrical release, refused to allow Miramax to use scenes from the play in Finding Neverland if it were to be released at the same time. Miramax thus agreed to delay the release of Finding Neverland by one year in exchange for the rights to reproduce those scenes as stage productions within the film. Freddie Highmore's performance in this movie led Johnny Depp to suggest him to Tim Burton for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in which Highmore played Charlie and Depp played Willy Wonka. Dustin Hoffman had also appeared in the Peter Pan sequel Hook, as Captain James Hook. The original screenplay for this film included a scene in which producer Charles Frohman (played by Hoffman) was to put on the Hook costume and read some of his lines to point out how silly he found it. Hoffman objected to this, so the scene was rewritten for him to read aloud and ridicule character names from the play.