Between Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood, Tim Burton has become a legend, yet it’s hard to ignore the the last 15 years jam-packed with obvious garble from Mars Attacks! to Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wionderland and Corpse Bride. Even his feature film version of his 1984 short Frankenweenie seems ill-advised.

I’m indifferent to the forthcoming Dark Shadows adaptation, although it appears the Goth director could actually be headed back in the right direction. Deadline reports today that Burton is in early talks to come aboard Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, the Ransom Riggs novel that 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment acquired last spring. Burton is in talks to develop the book as a potential directing project, and he would be involved in setting a writer to adapt the tale.

It’s exciting to see Burton finally set his sights on something a bit more original and out of his obvious comfort zone. Check out the plot details for the book after the break. “It involves Jacob, a 16-year-old whose childhood was filled with stories his grandfather told him about an orphanage for unusual children. Among the residents: a girl who could hold fire in her hands, another whose feet never touched the ground, and twins who communicated without speaking. When his beloved grandfather dies unexpectedly but leaves a message behind for his grandson, the teen heads off to his grandfather’s home on an isolated island off Wales. There he discovers the abandoned remains of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. It is in great disrepair and as Jacob explores its bedrooms and hallways, he can see the children were more than peculiar, they might have been there because they were dangerous. And he can’t shake the feeling they are still lurking around.”