INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Steven Spielberg, ‘The BFG’ Director, Explains How Parenting Inspired Him To Make The Movie

By Jonathan Franks
Published on: 11:00 PST, May 15, 2016

Steven Spielberg recently opened up about filming The BFG during a recent Q&A session on Twitter.

The #AskTheBFG campaign allowed fans to ask The BFG cast and award-winning director questions with hopes of having them answered through video responses posted to Twitter.

One particular question that was directed to Steven Spielberg asked the longtime filmmaker to explain what drew him to The BFG in the first place, allowing him to see the “potential for a film adaptation.”

According to Steven Spielberg, his interest in the Roald Dahl book started years ago when he would read the book to his children. As a parent, he explained the special connection to The BFG that he realized — a connection that most parents would agree exists even today.

“Well, I read the book to my kids when we were all growing up. I really related to The BFG because, as a reader…as a parent, you feel like The BFG reading to Sophie when you’re reading to your kids whether they are boys or girls.”

Over the years, Spielberg has helped to bring a vast number of stories to the big-screen through epic adaptation. For instance, Jurassic Park and The Lost World were both adapted from novels written by the late Michael Crichton.

Spielberg’s 1985 film, The Color Purple, starring Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, and Oprah Winfrey, was adapted from a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel written by Alice Walker nearly three years prior to the film’s release.

Those just are just a few of the examples from Steven Spielberg’s extensive list of critically-acclaimed original and adapted stories that he turned into successful films. It would not be surprising, then, to believe that adapting The BFG into a big-screen movie was an idea that first came to Steven Spielberg after he read the story for the first time.

However, that is apparently not the case. According to Steven, the concept of taking The BFG from the printed page to the movie screen did not come into his mind until he was given a beautifully written script for the story. That was apparently the moment when everything came together, allowing Steven to see that he could essentially continue the journey with his children that they started together years ago.

“I never really thought of it as a film, but I was so familiar with the book that when Melissa Madison wrote a script and I read the script and her adaptation was so beautifully rendered… it immediately struck me that, having raised my kids on The BFG, I should further raise them by making The BFG into a movie.”

For most of his family-friendly movies, Steven Spielberg has found an abundance of ways to focus on creativity and imagination — especially when it comes to bringing popular stories to life. Based on the trailers and reviews from Cannes, it is apparently clear that Spielberg has accomplished the same thing with The BFG.

If you remember the Roald Dahl story (and all of the gobblefunk that came along with it), chances are that you remember the imagination and creativity that Dahl put into the story when he first wrote it. Nearly 34 years after the book was first published, it has received a well-received adaptation from one of the best longtime directors in show business — Steven Spielberg.

[Image Credit: Ian Gavan/Getty Images]

Share this article: Steven Spielberg, ‘The BFG’ Director, Explains How Parenting Inspired Him To Make The Movie
Steven Spielberg
More from Inquisitr