Steven Spielberg loves him some abbreviations.
The “S” of DreamWorks SKG hired Melissa Mathison, his screenwriter on E.T., to adapt Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s book The BFG back in 2011. In 2014, The Hollywood Reporter reports that he’s gearing up to direct it.
While “ET” is the only above abbreviation that can be played in Scrabble – to the annoyance of your opponent – all the others add up to an exciting film for Spielberg.
The BFG will be a live-action adaptation. For the non-Dahl audience (who should read some Dahl immediately, regardless of their kid book nature), this will follow Sophie who meets a Big Friendly Giant in a forest. They team up to rid the world of the, decidedly less friendly, man-eating giants.
The BFG was published in 1982, the same year that Spielberg and Mathison brought the magical – and never needs to be rebooted – E.T. to screens.
While Spielberg has been setting his director’s table with many possible projects, it appears that The BFG and a Tom Hanks-starring espionage thriller are the likeliest Spielberg projects to be filmed next. A start date on The BFG is being eyed for early winter 2015, with a subsequent 2016 release. The Tom Hanks Cold War thriller is currently untitled (you think Spielberg is pitching The KGB as a title?), but THR reports that it’s the likeliest of his “smaller” options to shoot this year, prior to filming the live-action giants.
So, it appears that Spielberg has cleared his plate of Robopocalypse (robots vs. humans), Montezuma (Spanish conquistadors vs. Aztecs) and The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (a Jewish boy who is kidnapped, raised Catholic and becomes a Priest; but probably not right to characterize that as Judaism vs. Catholicism). And that he’s (“most likely”) set his table with tales of a little girl and big friendly giant vs. unfriendly giants and America vs. Russia.
Are you excited for Spielberg’s next directorial choices? Do you wish he’d’ve kept some of the other projects under his lens instead? Sound off in the comments, but please use full sentences, not just abbreviations.
