DREAM team
Spielberg + Dahl + Disney = gigantic hit.
The BFG
Starring Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Rebecca Hall
Bill Hader
Director Steven Spielberg
ETA 22 July “It’s an overused word but this really is a magical tale,” says producer Frank Marshall, whose work with Steven Spielberg stretches all the way back to Raiders Of The Lost Ark in 1981. “It’s just such a wonderful, classic story, and Melissa [ Mathison,
screenwriter] was able to preserve all the elements that made the book so wonderful: warmth, heart, wonder. She brought the same kind of understanding that she had of E.T.. The BFG has much the same tone as that movie.”
The BFG, which is, of course, an acronym for Big Friendly Giant, deserves all of your excitement. Not only does it herald Spielberg’s reteaming with Mathison (who sadly passed away last year) but it marks his first adaptation of a Roald Dahl book and his directorial debut for Disney. When it comes to family fantasy, this is the dream team.
Talking of dreams, they are exactly what the BFG specialises in – this 24ft softie collects them to release into children’s bedrooms at night. Sophie, a young orphan, spies him on his rounds one night, and so begins a magical tale of friendship as they embark on an adventure involving the Queen of England, the British Army and Royal Air Force, and a host of 50ft giants who aren’t friendly but flesh-eating.
Marshall has been trying to make the movie since 1991, with Paramount initially on board and Robin Williams tipped to play the BFG in the late-’90s. Now he’s delighted it took 25 years to happen, for it meant technology finally caught up with Dahl’s vast imagination. “Steven’s experience of working with Weta on
Tintin certainly prepared him for this, but this is the 2.0 version of the motion-capture process,” he says. “Steven created a process where the BFG and Sophie could work in the same space despite of the difference in size. With his combination of technical skill and creative skill, I really think that Steven is the only one who could have pulled this off. I don’t even want to call it motion capture anymore – it’s a step forward in the storytelling process.”
But did acclaimed stage actor Mark Rylance, who has of course just won an Oscar for Spielberg’s Cold War thriller Bridge Of Spies and now steps into the BFG’s canoe-sized shoes, take to the process? Marshall laughs. “He was like a duck to water! He wore this silly suit and he was still in character all the time. You could close your eyes and see the giant. That was so important for Ruby [ Barnhill, who
plays Sophie], to feel like she was talking to the BFG. It was a wonderful connection that they had.”
Marshall promises all of the things that made Spielberg a household name in the ’70s and ’80s – heart, tingly scares and bar-raising spectacle. “The scenes in Dream Country and also in Giant Country are wonderful,” he says, then coughs out a laugh of childlike disbelief. “But the whole movie is so magical, frankly! It’s Steven at the height of his filmmaking powers.” Jamie Graham