At the recent press day for The Bourne Ultimatum,
David Strathairn took some time to also talk about his work on the forthcoming fantasy
film The Spiderwick Chronicles, directed by Mark Waters. To wit:

“It’s going to be completed in the near future,” says the
Oscar-nominated star of 2005’s Good
Night, and Good Luck. “I play Arthur Spiderwick, the man who has written a field
guide to the magical kingdom of trolls and goblins and fairies and sprites, which
he’s locked away because it has all these dangerous secrets, it’s kind of a
Pandora’s Box with the fairy kingdom. He’s gone off into the world to contact them
because he really believes that the world is full of them,” Strathairn
continues, describing his character as a “mad botanist” and naturalist. “Maybe
he’s eaten too many mushrooms, I don’t know,” he jokes. “But he believes that there
are things we cannot see.”

Adapted from Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi’s best-selling
series of youth-skewing books, with a much labored-on screenplay (John Sayles, as well as Ted Elliott
and Terry Rossio), The Spiderwick Chronicles is set for release from Paramount and Nickelodeon Films in
February of next year, with Martin Short, Andrew McCarthy, Joan Plowright and Mary-Louise Parker joining young Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland) and Sarah Bolger (Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker) as the obligatory kids inspired by wonderment. For more information, click here.