Diary of a Wimpy kid has not only blown away cash registers at bookstores but it recently has blown away box office records by racking up over $45 million since its film adaptation’s debut.
In our short interview with the director, Thor Freudenthal, GalleyCat had the opportunity to ask him about the challenges of adapting a book into the box office smash.
What were the challenges of adapting the book to the film and still making the fans
happy?
The challenge is that the books are funny but very episodic. They offer a rich collection of loosely connected episodes, you can open the book at any page and find a funny anecdote. But how do you tie these stories together and make a movie? Our approach was to view it as a friendship story between Greg and Rowley. Their relationship creates a through-line in the movie. It’s a love story of sorts: Friend takes friend for granted, friend loses friend and realizes what he had, friend has to win friend back. Greg has to put aside his desire for accolades and popularity and learn what friendship really means. Once we had that structure in place, we hung all the favorite episodes of the book onto it.