Steven Spielberg's "The BFG" will arrive this summer with "Bridge of Spies" Academy Award-winner Mark Rylance starring in the titular role. But Roald Dahl's 1982 classic almost had a different friendly face in the towering lead when producers Kathleen Kennedy (now the president of Lucasfilm) and Frank Marshall attempted an adaptation in the 1990s.
At that time, Robin Williams had been tapped to play the Big Friendly, but the logistics proved too difficult as a 24-foot giant playing with a small orphan girl could not be made to look convincing with the visual effects of the time.
"There were a lot of different scripts. There were long gaps in between where we were not continuing the development of it," Kennedy said.
"And one of the challenges, obviously, was how to do it," Marshall added. One of the most important things for Steven was to have the actors in the same space so they were relating to each other, so Mark, as the giant, was really talking to [11-year-old actress Ruby Barnhill], as Sophie. Even five, 10 years ago the two actors would have had to be in different stages to do this. That wouldn't work very well. So it would have not made it, in my opinion."
"That was the biggest challenge," Kennedy said. "Figuring out technically how we would do it and whether or not we should try it with to do with forced perspective, lots of different kind of [digital] effects and techniques were explored. This is like stuff we went through, oddly enough, with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button because both projects were long, long gestating projects because of technology."
Williams was brought on as the lead following his family friendly successes with "Aladdin" and "Mrs. Doubtfire."
"Robin spent a lot of time with us actually doing cast readings and he was hilarious," Kennedy said. "He would have been a great BFG."
Alas, the technology of the time proved too ineffective at capturing the giant in a lifelike way. But, 20 years later, the development of motion-capture performance has made this dream a reality once more.
"The fact that they were acting in the same space and Steven was able to see the environments that they were in on the monitor made it incredible," Marshall said. "I think that you get performances that are really, really magical."
"The BFG" will finally hit theaters on July 1.
Follow Brandon Katz at @Great_Katzby
