Appearing right in the middle of Disney’s absurdly loaded 2019 slate, nestled between major sequels (Toy Story 4, Frozen 2), jostling for space among pumped-up superhero adventures (Avengers 4, Captain Marvel), and standing alongside the studio’s huge live-action remakes (Lion King, Aladdin, Dumbo), is the anomalous Artemis Fowl, and the first teaser has just dropped (watch below).

Based on the series of hit teen novels by Irish author Eoin Colfer, it’s a brand-new IP for the hit-making studio, and Disney has enlisted its top man for world-building franchise starters: Kenneth Branagh.

Having laid the foundations for the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Marvel Studios’ make-or-break Thor and initiated the studio’s live-action remake cycle with Cinderella, Branagh was the perfect filmmaker to get this Harry Potter-challenging fantasy epic off the ground.

Artemis Fowl, played by Irish newcomer Ferdia Shaw, is a boy genius. He comes from a line of criminal masterminds, and when his father mysteriously disappears, he must go on an epic journey of discovery that takes him beneath the ground we walk on into the realm of the fairies to uncover the truth.

Branagh’s film is a largely faithful adaptation of the first book, originally released in 2001. It was described at the time as “Die Hard with fairies” thanks to a magical siege that takes place in Fowl Manor, the coastal pile that’s been home to the Fowls for generations. One major difference between the books and the film is in the casting of fairy commander Julius Root.

Branagh has flipped Root’s gender, casting his Murder on the Orient Express co-star Judi Dench in the part written as a man in Colfer’s novels, based entirely on what he describes as an “uninformed hunch.”

“I’ve worked with [Dench] many times now,” Branagh explained during a break in production back in April, “and there was just something that the great theater director Peter Brook refers to as the ‘uninformed hunch,’ and so the uninformed hunch is that whenever I ask Judi to do something she says ‘Is it different?’”





In the film’s first trailer (above), you can hear Dench’s performance is different, and unlike anything she’s ever done before. Branagh describes her performance as “Napoleonic,” and the filmmaker says he likes to remind the 83-year-old acting titan of her desire to be “different” in her moments of uncertainty on set.

“It sounds quite unlike anything you’ve ever done, you look quite unlike anyone you’ve ever looked like, and I knew that would appeal to you.”

Here’s everything we learned from Branagh about his take on Artemis Fowl, gleaned from a conversation in the library of Fowl Manor, which has been built for real to last through a possible eight-film shoot at Longcross Studios just outside of London.

The book has been described as “Die Hard with Fairies”, is that what you’re going for with this?

Well, it’s definitely a book with a siege at the heart of it, and as you’re probably aware, we’re starting that process today, with a troll hammering its way into the house, and the beginnings of seeing whether the brilliant Artemis Fowl, who’s able to translate fairy books through his intelligence and his imagination, can, in combination with Holly Short [Lara McDonnell], stop it.

One of the things I think that Eoin [Colfer] really did so well, and one of the things I wanted to encapsulate … sometimes at the beginning of a process like this, my distinguished colleagues at Disney, who I get on very well with, will sort of invite you to say, “What’s your take on it? What’s your great idea?”

And my great idea was to copy Eoin Colfer, and to not get in the way. So I hope, for instance, that the film, like the book and books, is very rapid, very punchy, and pacy. I think one of the ways in which he manages to keep us very intrigued by a series of beautifully improbable things — unless we have a lot of people who believe in fairies here? Maybe we have, clap your hands if you do of course — is that he moves at a pace which means that you just, even if as it were you disagreed with the conception, you are thrilled by the execution.

And so I didn’t at all disagree. Who am I to say what’s out there or indeed under our feet in Ireland?

Artemis Fowl is in cinemas 2019 (Disney) More

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