Joe Wright's "multiracial" Peter Pan casts young white boy

By Sean O'Neal | March 18, 2014 | 10:05pm

Aux Features Film

Joe Wright has said that he plans for his Peter Pan origin story to be “international and multiracial, effectively challenging audiences’ preconceived notions”—a confrontational, paradigm-shifting strategy he’s so far pursued by casting three white people, thus challenging notions that “international and multiracial” can’t just mean “hey, Hugh Jackman is Australian.” Anyway, with Jackman on board as Blackbeard, Garrett Hedlund as the not-yet-Captain Hook, and Rooney Mara as Tiger Very Lily, Wright has now picked his Peter Pan: blue-eyed boy Levi Miller, who, as a white person, is technically one of the world’s multiple races.

The relative unknown (his biggest credit is a single episode of Terra Nova) will star in Wright’s revisionist take on the J.M. Barrie tale. The new story finds Miller playing a WWII-era orphan who’s kidnapped by pirates and taken to Neverland, that fantasy realm where—much like believing makes you fly—proudly proclaiming your movie as “multiracial” just makes it so. Anyway, Variety still swears this movie will have a “very different” and “international” take, so maybe, say, Captain Hook has his hand bitten off by Hitler, at least.