‘The BFG’ Comes From the Creator of Willie Wonka

Steven Spielberg‘s much anticipated 2016 film The BFG dropped its teaser trailer — and the spectacle happily reminds viewers that the heaviest hitters, all the sane geniuses of blockbuster American cinema, are involved in this one. It’s a Disney production that promises classic Spielberg teamed as usual with visual mastermind Janusz Kaminski and music legend John Williams providing the score. The magic-filled screenplay is by the late Melissa Mathison, who wrote a couple little movies called The Black Stallion and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

But the elephant (he might like the imagery) in the room with these contemporary geniuses is the late British author Roald Dahl, whose books have sold a quarter billion copies around the globe. Dahl’s books for children have been extraordinarily adaptable to film — he’s given movies some of their most memorable characters and situations. The BFG — that’s Big Friendly Giant — promises to be another, the movie leaping to life from Dahl’s book of the same title. Dahl provides his own stiff competition. He wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Matilda — even Spielberg’s Gremlins was loosely inspired by Dahl’s The Gremlins from 1943.