'The Secret Garden' Trailer: The Literary Classic Gets A New Edition

David Heyman, the producer of the Harry Potter and Paddington movies, is ushering another literary classic to the big screen with The Secret Garden, the fourth cinematic adaptation of author Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel. Check out the colorful, magical new trailer below.

Last year, I caught up with the 1949 version of The Secret Garden for the first time, and I ended up finding a lot to like about it. Most prominently, the film was largely shot in black and white but the scenes in the titular garden were shot in Technicolor, bringing an almost magical feel to the moments set there. It was a terrific way to represent a pure, idealized past for several of the story's characters. This new version dramatically expands the scope of the garden (there are, like, full-blown ruins and waterfalls this time around instead of just a small enclosure) while using CG to bring a new level of shine to the surroundings, and it seems to be leaning more into the magical angle, with many of the dazzling, blooming, colorful plants likely appearing in the kids' imaginations. Then again, maybe it's really magic. The filmmakers are allowed to take creative liberties, after all.

Marc Munden (Utopia, Black Sails) directs this version, and Jack Thorne (Wonder, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) wrote the script. Dixie Egerickx plays the main character, the young orphan Mary Lennox, and Colin Firth plays her uncle, the distant and grief-stricken Archibald Craven. Meanwhile, the prickly Mrs. Medlock is played by Julie Walters, and Edan Hayhurst plays Mary's sickly cousin Colin.

Here's the movie's official synopsis:

THE SECRET GARDEN tells the story of Mary Lennox (Dixie Egerickx, Genius), a prickly and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents. When they suddenly die, she is sent back to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven (Colin Firth – A Single Man, The King's Speech) on his remote country estate deep in the Yorkshire moors. There, she begins to uncover many family secrets, particularly after meeting her sickly cousin Colin (Edan Hayhurst, Genius), who has been shut away in a wing of the house. Together, these two damaged, slightly misfit children heal each other through their discovery of a wondrous secret garden, lost in the grounds of Misselthwaite Manor. A magical place of adventure that will change their lives forever.

The Secret Garden hits theaters in the UK on April 17, 2020.