Tower looms large in trailer for new movie

The resort is one of the stars of gothic Hollywood director Tim Burton’s latest movie, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.

And it appears in some of the most exciting scenes in the newly-released trailer for the film which is due in cinemas this autumn.

Tim Burton, the stars and his film crew were in Blackpool in May 2015, filming on the Prom and he returned a couple of months later to switch on the Illuminations.

Excerpts of the scenes shot in Blackpool can be seen in the trailer as the film heads towards its dramatic ending.

Based on the best-selling novel by US author Ransom Riggs, it stars Eva Green, Samuel L Jackson, Asa Butterfield, Rupert Everett, and Terence Stamp and Judi Dench.

The film focuses on a boy called Jake, who, after discovering clues to a mystery that spans alternative realities and times, uncovers a secret refuge known as Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.

As he learns about the residents and their unusual abilities, Jake realises 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.

Filming in the resort lasted two weeks last May, with scenes shot at the Tower Circus understood to be pivotal to the movie’s plot.

Tim Burton, most famously the director of Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, told The Gazette: “Blackpool wasn’t in the script but it felt part of the vibe of the film so we wrote it in. The scenes here take place in the last act of the film, when all the bad guys are coming to perform their final experiment.”

The film will be released in cinemas on September 30.