‘Magic Faraway Tree’ Director Ben Gregor Knows He Has an Amazing Cast

Before production had begun on the anticipated film adaptation of Enid Blyton‘s The Magic Faraway Tree, director Ben Gregor worried that he’d put one of his stars, Andrew Garfield, off a little bit.

“We wrote a song for the film and we sent it to Andrew early on,” Gregor explains to The Hollywood Reporter. “And I hadn’t worked with him yet and you don’t know… With actors sometimes, you can put them off.”

But Garfield loved it. The gesture ended up being instrumental in the atmosphere that Gregor later cultivated on set — one of true-heartedness, trust, and that crucial Blyton ingredient: magic. “Everybody was putting themselves out there,” Gregor says.

The project has grabbed headlines in recent months for releasing back-to-back smash hit casting announcements: first came Garfield and Claire Foy (The Crown), then came Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton, Derry Girls) and Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer), and just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, Rebecca Ferguson, star of Dune, was brought on board.

Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous, Shrek 2) Nonso Anozie (Sweet Tooth, Ted Lasso) Dustin Demri-Burns (Slow Horses, The Great), Hiran Abeysekera (The Life of Pi, The Father and the Assassin), Pippa Bennett-Warner (Gangs of London, See How They Run, Chloe) as well as Sirs Lenny Henry, Michael Palin and Simon Russell Beale, line up alongside them.

The talent is eye-watering, and Gregor is well aware. The filmmaker (Britannia, Cuckoo, Black Ops, Fatherhood) was working with a script by Paddington 2 mastermind Simon Farnaby. “He’s got such a big heart, he really embraced what the actors were doing,” Gregor says of his fellow Brit. The shoot has wrapped and Gregor tells THR he is about to show the producers the director’s cut.

Based on the Faraway Tree series of novels for children by beloved author Blyton, the film follows Polly (Foy) and Tim Thompson (Garfield) and their children, Beth, Joe and Fran, (played by Delilah Bennett-Cardy, Phoenix Laroche and Billie Gadsdon), who find themselves forced to relocate to the remote English countryside. There, the children discover a magical tree and its extraordinary and eccentric occupants — a far cry away from the distractions of their 21st-century screens.