Neverland takes an entirely original approach to the classic story of Peter Pan, who first appeared as a minor character in the 1902 novel The Little White Bird, by the Scottish author and playwright Sir James Matthew Barrie. Directed by Marc Forster (Monster's Ball), Neverland gives Barrie the Shakespeare in Love treatment, imagining his life in the year leading up to the premiere of his play Peter Pan, in which the airborne boy-for-life takes center stage, in 1904. (Barrie's 1911 novel, Peter and Wendy, is the basis of most screen adaptations.) The movie stars Johnny Depp as Barrie (yes, he does the accent) and Kate Winslet (who played Wendy onstage early in her career) as Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies, a widowed mother of four whose chaotic household inspires Barrie to create a fantasy world where no one ever has to grow up. "The fascinating thing about Johnny as an actor is that his choices are not typical," says Forster. "Ultimately he represents the person who never grows up, who always has the child alive in him, who's always creative." Dustin Hoffman plays a theater impresario from New York who champions Barrie, and Julie Christie portrays Sylvia's prim, society-matron mother. "For me," Forster concludes, "it is about the transformation of imagination—being able to transform yourself into something greater than you are, even if nobody believes in that or believes in you."