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00:19That's so great.
00:20Yeah, I know.
00:21Tony, Judy, Lizzie and I were at a signing and we were purged by the clerk who gave us
00:27a letter from three kids that said that they had had real experiences with fairies.
00:31And we didn't really know what to think of the letter.
00:34What do you think about all this mail?
00:35It's true, Mom.
00:36No, it's not.
00:38We had no idea whether it was true or not.
00:40And to some extent, it didn't matter whether it was true because what was so fascinating
00:45is for these kids, it was obviously true.
00:47Now you believe me?
00:50Kelly and I just thought the idea of kids, modern-day kids, experiencing trolls and goblins
00:56and seeing that stuff, we just thought that was the coolest thing.
00:59It wasn't once upon a time.
01:01It wasn't in a faraway land like England.
01:03It was here in America.
01:04They were modern kids with modern problems.
01:06And so we thought we should tell the story.
01:08This would be a really, really cool story to tell.
01:11After we got the letter from the three kids, Tony, Judy, Lizzie and I decided we would get
01:16in contact with them, and they invited us up to their house in Maine, and they produced
01:22a bunch of what they called fairy artifacts, and they told us the story that we wound up
01:28taking and putting into the five little books that are the Spiderwick Chronicles, and then
01:32later restoring some of Arthur Spiderwick's art into Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to
01:37the Fantastical world around you.
01:47Names are hard to come up with, but I think that to really have a character, it has to
01:51be the right name.
01:57Mulgarath, Holly came up with that.
01:59I thought it was such a great name, and it's because it got the word wrath in it, and I
02:01think it's just great because that's totally fitting of the type of character that he is.
02:06Thimble-tack, what happens if goblins get the book?
02:09Thimble-tack is very descriptive of what he is.
02:12When he's helpful as a brownie, it's like helpful as a thimble, but he can be prickly
02:17when he's a boggart, so it's tack.
02:19Hogsqueal, same thing, it evoked kind of what he looked like, or what he kind of is, you
02:23know, he's kind of untrustworthy, he's a little swarthy, he'd squeal on you, you know, that
02:26kind of thing.
02:28Redcap actually is an old folklore, and what the redcaps were, where they were these goblins,
02:33usually found over in England and Europe, and they haunted old battlefields, and they
02:37soaked their caps in the blood of the slain, of all the fallen soldiers.
02:42So what we thought would be, well, let's do an American version of the redcap, and we're
02:47like, let's make it, first we thought Civil War, obviously a very horrible and bloody war
02:50in America, but then we thought, let's go further back, so this guy's really old, we'll make
02:53him like a Revolutionary War guy, and so he's got the tri-corner hat and the old Revolutionary
02:58War jacket and stuff, we tried to do a lot of that kind of stuff to make sure, to kind
03:02of remind the reader and the viewer and the audience that these things were old, they don't
03:06age the way humans do, these things lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, some of
03:10them even longer.
03:16Arthur Spiderwick was very much inspired by Arthur Rackham, who was a turn-of-the-century children's
03:21book illustrator, probably one of the biggest in his time.
03:24He illustrated J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and Kensington Gardens, he illustrated Alice in Wonderland,
03:29a lot of classics that we know today, and so he was the inspiration for Spiderwick, and
03:35we just, again, we tried to come up with a really neat name that we thought would just
03:39kind of evoke that kind of Victorian, kind of gothy feeling, and so there it was.
03:46Jared?
03:47Oh, come on, Simon.
03:48I'm Mallory Grace.
03:49One thing it's important to know, that their names are not Jared, Simon, and Mallory Grace.
03:53We changed their names for their protection and for their privacy.
03:56Their mother and father were very worried that they would be put in an uncomfortable position,
04:02so no, you can't really contact them, but they, I mean, they're very excited about the
04:10movie.
04:10They're very excited about the success of their story.
04:19Tony D. Terralisi and Holly Black have become real icons in the world of children's literature,
04:25and the Spiderwick Chronicles has really emerged as being a series of books that many, many
04:31kids read nowadays.
04:33And they really tapped into the fantasy world in a way that I think not only kids relate
04:39to it, but parents relate to it equally as well.
04:41The books were the first thing that attracted me to it when they were talking about making
04:45a movie out of it.
04:46They'd written a script, but I said, I don't want to read the script first.
04:49I just want to start with the books.
04:50And I would say just about a few, you know, chapters into the first book, there's this
04:56moment when he goes into the secret study, discovers it for the first time, hears something,
05:02and he goes and he sees and written in the dust on the desk is click, clack, watch your
05:06back.
05:06And I remember this little chill going down my spine when I read that and thinking, this
05:11could be a great movie.
05:13I was hooked, and we just immediately jumped in and tried to make a screenplay that was
05:17worthy of it.
05:18Was I surprised it would become a movie?
05:20A lot of my friends and people that had read it early on and had seen a lot of the
05:25sketches
05:25were like, dude, this would just be such a great movie.
05:28There was interest right away.
05:31The way this all started was that Ellen Goldsmith-Vane, one of the executive producers, was the manager
05:37for Tony DiTolisi and Holly Black.
05:39They knew that in my background, I had been involved with a number of movies that involved
05:46the tone of their books and creatures as well.
05:51And we just had that kind of connection, you know.
05:53I felt very flattered.
05:55I know this house isn't perfect.
05:59What's nice about the five books is that they do complete an arc with introducing the family
06:04and then paying off ultimately what is the central quest of this, which is, you know, the bad
06:10guy, Malgrath, who wants this book and how he gets his comeuppance in the end.
06:15Yes!
06:15Death to the ogre!
06:17What's always challenging when you're adapting a book where you have a wealth of imaginative
06:22and great things to choose from is which ones you have to pull out.
06:25That's always the painful part.
06:31With Tony and Holly's complete enthusiasm, they embraced the fact that the kids who'd read
06:37the books when they were 10 in 2001 are now 17, 18-year-olds.
06:42And they're fans of the books, but in a way you needed to kind of, like, raise the stakes
06:47of everything, amp up the action, amp up the energy, and the danger quotient.
06:52Get the book and kill them!
06:54Kill them all!
06:55Another big change that we made.
06:57In the books, the boys, Jared and Simon, are nine years old and Mallory's 13.
07:03We just felt, wow, these kids just feel really young.
07:06So we just kept on moving a little bit older, a little bit older, which I think brings the
07:10movie, not only, you know, kids are still going to love it, but I think it brings older
07:13kids into the mix as well.
07:15So take that extra beat, Freddie.
07:19You know what I mean?
07:20Just note that.
07:21When Mark came aboard, Mark had made movies like Mean Girls and Freaky Friday.
07:25Mean Girls in particular struck a chord with me as a father of three teenagers, and what
07:30we set out to do is to make a movie that is honest to the language of teenagers.
07:35You're so annoying.
07:36You think you know everything?
07:37And honest to the dilemma that teenagers have with each other, and with their world, and
07:43with their parents as well.
07:45So I think that's why Mark is the perfect director.
07:49We set out to make a movie that would appeal from 8 to 80, and we found that parents are
07:55loving the movie, teenagers loving the movie, older people are loving the movie, as well
07:59as the 8 to 12-year-old kids.
08:01And that was our goal, is to say, let's make a movie that feels like this is really happening
08:06to us, and this could happen to us if we just happened to have a seeing stone.
08:10The only way you can set out to make a movie of this size and complication is to be a
08:16true
08:16believer.
08:16And eventually, Tony Dederlitz and Holly Black had me believing, yes, these fantastical creatures
08:22exist, but if you don't believe they exist, then you could be doomed to fall into the same
08:26trap that the Grace family did.
08:28Are you blind?
08:29I put a note right on the cover.
08:31Can't you read?
08:38Didn't you read the note?
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