Last month, it was announced that Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy will star in The Magical Faraway Tree, a film adaptation of Enid Blyton’s extremely popular, very British children’s novels. Garfield and Foy play the parents of a trio of children who find, in the woods behind their home, a magical tree and an enchanted wood.
Now, the film has added a trio of curently-very-hot stars to the cast: Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan (above); Sweet Tooth’s Nonso Anozie; and Baby Reindeer breakout star Jessica Gunning. Coughlan plays a fairy, Silky; Anozie is Moonface; and Gunning plays Dame Washalot.
According to Deadline, they’re also joined by Lenny Henry (The Sandman), Michael Palin (Monty Python), and Simon Russell Beale (Penny Dreadful) as “a trio of mystical wise men from the Land of Know-Alls.” And three more delightfully named characters have also been cast: the Saucepan Man will be played by Dustin Demri-Burns (The Great); Mr. Oom Boom by Mark Heap (Renegade Nell); and Mr. Watzisname by Oliver Chris (Foundation).
Ben Gregor (Britannia) directs the adaptation, which has a screenplay by Simon Farnaby, whose resume includes epic highs (Paddington 2) and questionable lows (Wonka). In their “contemporary reboot” of the book series, Deadline noted earlier this year, “the three protagonists are uprooted from their hi-tech home in an ultra-modern London Nine Elms-Battersea Power Station-style development to a ramshackle barn in the English countryside without an internet connection.”
No release date has been announced, nor we do know, yet, who will be playing the three kids.
