When Tim Burton, one of Hollywood’s most distinctive directors, came to Comic-Con International last week with never-before-seen footage from his upcoming adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, the audience at the San Diego convention centre went wild at the sight of Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and other beloved characters from Lewis Carroll’s classic.

The rapturous applause, however, did little to assuage Burton’s anxiety. “If you saw how much was missing,” Burton later said with a laugh, “you’d be nervous too.”

Opening day for Alice is still seven months away, but Burton might as well have an impatient white rabbit following him around with a ticking pocket watch tucked in his waistcoat. The movie is being made using a combination of live-action, animation and other techniques.

Penned by screenwriter Linda Woolverton, Burton’s Alice sees the curious blonde (19-year-old Australian actress Mia Wasikowska) tumble down the rabbit hole into a world populated by an array of human and animal oddities. One of them, the outrageous-looking, orange-haired Mad Hatter, played by Johnny Depp, accompanies her on much of her journey across the strange land.

In assembling a story that borrows from all of Carroll’s Alice material, he wanted the movie to be more than simply a document of a girl wandering through a surreal landscape; all of the characters needed to have an internal life and to be more richly drawn. Alice, for example, evolves from an astonished naif to empowered action heroine, sporting her very own suit of armour, over the course of the film.

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