Roald Dahl has long been a rich vein of source material for cinema. The live-action adaptations of The Witches and Matilda are rightly well-regarded, as are the less conventional stop-motion versions of Fantastic Mr Fox and James and the Giant Peach.
There has already been a cartoon version of the BFG, Dahl’s tale of a Big Friendly Giant who captures and then delivers dreams to people all over the world. His talk of human beans, snoz-cumbers and the like is highly endearing, but the cartoon has aged badly, despite excellent voice work from David Jason.
It is therefore with guarded optimism that the news of a planned live-action adap is welcomed. DreamWorks are to produce the new film, working from a script on which Melissa Mathison is said to be hard at work. Mathison wrote ET and The Indian in the Cupboard, so is far from green and should be able to bring an assured touch to the script.
Needless to say, with the state of the art being what it is in the realm of CGI, a wholly believable BFG (along with the assortment of delightfully named giants he lives amongst – Bloodbottler, Bonecrusher, Maidmasher, Meatdripper) should not cause anyone at ILM, Weta or Digital Domain to break a sweat and if the right director can be found we might just wind up with a version of the film worthy of the impressive source material.
