According to Entertainment Weekly, Steven Spielberg will be directing a big screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The BFG.” For the uninitiated, BFG stands for Big Friendly Giant, and the story is about a little girl named Sofie who, unable to sleep one night, discovers the BFG peering into neighborhood windows. She discovers that he is the only giant in the world friendly to humans and that he captures good dreams and delivers them by way of a trumpet like device to sleeping children.
The BFG takes Sofie back to his home and explains that while he subsists purely on snozzcumbers, most giants will sneak into human civilizations to snack on ‘human beans’ specifically children. Sofie and the BFG hatch a plan to enlist the queen to capture the other giants in order to prevent further harvesting of human beans.
The BFG creates a nightmare in which there was information regarding the giants, Sofie was also in the dream and was left in the queens presence to confirm her dream upon her waking. The queen of course believes the little girl and dispatches the military to capture the giants and drop them into a giant pit where they will be held for the rest of their lives.
A pair of houses are built for Sofie and the BFG so that they can hang out for the remainder of their days.
I’m not really sure what the message of this story is other than just another wacky adventure from Mr. Dahl. I really enjoyed his stories as a kid and continue to enjoy them today, I can’t think of a Dahl adaptation that I didn’t like, except that horrible chocolate factory one with Gene Wilder… *shutter*… have you seen “James and the Giant Peach?” Have you seen “Fantastic Mr. Fox?” and say what you will about the duo of Burton-Depp but “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is incredibly faithful to the source material and I quite enjoy it.
This isn’t the first time on the screen for this story, it was adapated into an animated film in 1989 but I’m interested to see how this gets adapted this time, what changes and concessions will be made? How will this type of story translate? It all remains to be seen.
Should be fun.