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'''Finding Neverland''' is an Academy Award-winning film that released in 2004, starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. 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.

Contents

Cast and crew

Awards

Box office

Trivia

Differences from the true story

Awards and nominations

External links

Cast and crew

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. Dustin Hoffman, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell, and Freddie Highmore also appear in the movie.

Awards

''Finding Neverland'' was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Johnny Depp. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Score by Jan A. P. Kaczmarek. It was also nominated for several other awards, including a Screen Actors Guild Award for Freddie Highmore for playing the part of "Peter".

Box office

US Gross Domestic Takings: US$ 51,680,613
:+ Other International Takings: $64,970,000
= Gross Worldwide Takings: $116,650,613

Trivia

★ ''Finding Neverland'' was originally scheduled to be released in the fall of 2003, but Columbia Pictures, which had the rights to Barrie's play for their film ''Peter Pan'', refused to allow Miramax to use certain 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 use Barrie's words.

★ The film was at one point (before release) titled ''J.M. Barrie's Neverland''.

★ Freddie Highmore and Johnny Depp are also in ''Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'' together, with Highmore playing Charlie and Depp playing Willy Wonka. This came about because Depp was extremely impressed with Highmore's performance in this movie and requested him for the role of Charlie to Tim Burton.

★ Dustin Hoffman, who appears in the movie, has also appeared in another famous work adapting the Peter Pan mythos: ''Hook'', as the title character Captain James Hook. There was originally a scene in which Dustin Hoffman's character was to put on the Hook costume and read some of his lines to point out how silly he found it, but Hoffman didn't want to do it, so the scene was changed to him reading off and ridiculing character names from the play.

★ When J. M. Barrie is playing with the children pretending to be a pirate, Johnny Depp uses Jack Sparrow's voice.

★ Also in the film are
:-Mackenzie Crook, as the usher, with whom Depp stars in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (he plays Ragetti, the pirate with the wooden eye),
:-Angus Barnett, as Nana the dog/Mr. Reilly, who appeared as Mulroy in Pirates of the Caribbean
:-Paul Whitehouse, as the stage manager, of The Fast Show fame, of which Depp is famously a fan, and on which he once appeared alongside Whitehouse.

Differences from the true story

The opening credits of the film state that it was "inspired by true events". In addition to the material invented for the screenplay, it takes various liberties with the historical facts, and the timing of events:

★ Arthur Llewelyn Davies was still alive and well when Barrie befriended Sylvia and their sons.

★ There were five Davies boys, not just four. (Nico, the youngest, was omitted.)

★ Michael (and Nico) had not yet been born, and Peter was still an infant, when Barrie met the Davies family.

★ The Davies household had a nanny Mary Hodgson, who accompanied the boys on their visits to Kensington Gardens; Barrie did not meet Sylvia until after he'd become friends with George and Jack. (Much of the role of Sylvia's mother in the film was based on Mary.)

★ The audience for the debut of ''Peter Pan'' was not "seeded" with children. (The only precaution taken against a cool reception was that the musicians were to clap if the audience failed to respond to Peter Pan's plea to save Tinker Bell; this proved unnecessary.)

★ Sylvia was still healthy at the play's premiere in 1904, and did not die until nearly six years later. Arthur also survived to see the play's debut. (Barrie and Frohman did stage an improvised home presentation of the play, but it was for 5-year-old Michael who was suffering from a stubborn childhood illness during the play's revival.)

★ Likewise, the Barries' marriage ended shortly before Sylvia's death, but years later than depicted in the movie.

★ The lives of the Davies family were rife with tragedy following the film's optimistic ending: George died fighting in World War I in 1915, Michael drowned with a friend at Oxford in 1921, and Peter grew to hate his identification as "Peter Pan", eventually committing suicide in 1960.

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards record
'1. Best Original Score'

'Academy Awards:'

★ 'Won' : Best Original Score (Finding Neverland (soundtrack))

★ Nominated : Best Picture

★ Nominated : Best Adapted Screenplay

★ Nominated : Best Actor for Johnny Depp

★ Nominated : Achievement In Art Direction

★ Nominated : Achievement In Costume Design

★ Nominated : Achievement In Film Editing
'75th National Board of Review Awards'

★ 'Won' : Best Picture
'Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards:'

★ 'Won' : Top 10 Films

External links

★ Official Site

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