The Spiderwick Chronicles book series follows a recently divorced mother and her three children – Mallory and younger twin siblings Jared and Simon – as they relocate from New York to their ancestral family home in Henson, Michigan. The children soon discover magical creatures inhabit this home and are thrown into an adventure of good versus evil as they are tasked with the protection of their great-grandfather’s Field Guide to Magical Creatures. If it falls into the wrong hands – i.e., those of the ogre Mulgarath – it could spell the end of the town’s human inhabitants.
It’s been over twenty years since the first book in the series was published and sixteen years since the film version was released. Revisiting the story of the Grace family and the fantastical world they inhabit was an exciting venture for showrunner Aron Eli Coleite (Locke & Key, Daybreak). Working with the series’ authors Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi for this adaptation, Coleite was able to delve deeper into the subject matter and lore to spread the story across eight episodes. The goal was not to just retell the same story for fans of the original, but to offer a new take and provide relevant content for modern-day viewers in the context of fantasy. We spoke about the themes he explores and the lengthy, but rewarding, journey involved in getting the script from page to screen.
I understand this project was quite a journey from start to finish. Tell me about the process getting it made.
I feel like I have a very specific niche of what people like me to write, which is families moving to Victorian homes and finding magic inside. It’s a really narrow niche, but I’ve done it a lot. So when Spiderwick first came across my desk, I said no. “I just did this with Locke & Key.” And then some very wise people asked him again.
Aron Eli Coleite. Photo by Cassie Pappas
My anniversary of working on Spiderwick was four years ago. So it’s been a process! But when I first read it, it was very early on in the pandemic. I was watching my kids suffer through a lot of mental health issues, through depression and anxiety. Reading the books, I realized that it was Jared’s story. It’s in the DNA of the character. He’s going through mental health issues and coming out of them on the other side, understanding what he’s going through and not feeling stigmatized or ashamed. So I knew that, beyond the fantastical, this story actually had something really relevant and important to say.
As for the journey… fraught is the best way to put it. I’ve been doing this a while now and even still, there’s always something that is going to shock you. But this new life feels incredible. It feels like this is the little show that could. We didn’t have the budget of a lot of big shows and it was a struggle throughout to create this universe and make sure our effects were just as big as those of any other show. To finally be here at this moment over four years later is really fulfilling.
Given that this series is airing 20 years after the books were released and 16 years since the movie, I imagine there is a sense of nostalgia for older viewers. Does this iteration have a target audience?
My hope is that it’s for everybody. I definitely wanted to make something for co-viewing between parents and kids. We are separated from what our children watch, and I wanted something that could actually bring families together to watch together. And if they’re watching it separately, to be something to discuss around the dinner table. Something to bond people.
But it’s for both newcomers and old fans. That’s why we made a lot of changes from the books and the movie – not only because it’s a very different type of storytelling. With a movie, you have two hours. You condense things and it has more drive. We had a condensed eight hours and had to figure out ways of making sure those eight hours feel extremely propulsive.
We made changes that gave it more drive and also played with the expectations of the loyal fans. The Spiderwick fan base is amazing. One of our jobs is to make sure that we keep them hooked as well, and a way we can consistently surprise them is to take what they think is going to happen and subvert those expectations. They have a really great adaptation in the film version that they can watch. We wanted to give both new and loyal fans something different to chew on… but something that still stays extremely true to the DNA of the books. The characters, mission and story are the same.
What was it like to have Holly and Tony involved in this adaptation?
It was awesome. When I’m doing any kind of adaptation, I really want to work intimately with the authors. It’s presumptuous to think that I know any better when they’re the creators of the property. They are the creators of these characters, and so they are the holders of that lore. It’s really important to me that they not only feel good about what I’m doing with their creation, but that I’m not making changes for the sake of making changes or making changes that are not in line with the story or show.
Tell me more about delving into the Spiderwick lore, especially given the number of companion books and additions to the original series that have been published.
One of the greatest things about working with Tony and Holly was that together, they are the best Wikipedia of magical creatures that anybody could ask for.
A great example of this was creating the role of Calliope. Mulgarath needed a sidekick. That was actually one of the first things I had considered when talking about this new series. We had a great debate over what Calliope was and went through all manner of creatures. It was Holly who said, “You know what she should be? She should be a fetch.” I’m sitting there thinking that I’ve studied my monster manual. I’m adept at knowing creatures and lore. I thought I was pretty good. And then Holly throws this idea out there. I said, “A what?”
I’d never heard of a “fetch”, beyond Mean Girls. But Holly not only talked about them, she also brought up these amazing images and sketches, explaining that they bring warnings of death and appear as doppelgangers. This was a brand-new creature that I’d never seen before, and I thought, if we could introduce it into this world, how amazing would that be?
We also consulted with Dr. Yalda T. Uhls from the Center for Scholars & Storytellers. In addition to the lore, we wanted to get the mental health aspects of the show correct. It was really important to us that we give not only an engaging, but an accurate portrayal of the characters’ mental health issues. What is Jared really going through and how can we make this a representation that isn’t about fixing him? This is a story about acceptance; not only self-acceptance, but that of your family and coming together as a whole.
Is Jared the hero of this story? Tell me about the relationship he and the villain, Mulgarath, share.
Jared is the hero of the story. This is his season and his story arc.
The movie is more of a raid on the Spiderwick house. The kids are holding this book and they need to protect it. I couldn’t sustain that for eight hours of television, it just wasn’t the right story.
So the focal point is between Jared as hero and Mulgarath as villain, and we made it a game of cat and mouse between them as to who has the upper hand; who’s playing whom. Having a teenager go up against a hundred-year-old ogre doesn’t seem quite fair. But while it might not look like we’re putting them on equal footing, one of the major points that I really want people — especially young audiences — to take away from this is that teenagers have full capacity. I have so much hope for our future, because this generation is so smart and can work their way out of so many problems.
Jared Grace (Lyon Daniels) Photo courtesy of ROKU
In that light can you comment on the theme of the absent father?
There are a lot of pop culture references, not the least of which is Luke and Vader. We also talk a lot about Edward Herrmann’s character in The Lost Boys. When we knew that we were creating Mulgarath as not just a brute ogre, but also a sly, insidious force worming his way into the family, it was totally natural that these kids would start to look at him as a father figure. We talk a lot about divorce and surrounding themes, but we also try to take it a step further, especially in the boys’ relation to their biological father who pretty much gave up on the family. Divorce is hard enough, but now you have this really selfish, childlike dad… how does that make you feel? It’s heartbreaking.
With heartbreak comes a desire to heal. Here’s this seemingly understanding father figure who might happen to be an ogre underneath that visage, but who says exactly what they want and need to hear. You’re special. You’re important. The fact that they fall into a lot of his traps is understandable because it’s what they crave more than anything.
Has the fantasy genre, particularly for children and young adult audiences, changed over time? Is it becoming “darker”?
I’m a kid who grew up on The Black Cauldron, Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Watcher in the Woods. My childhood was filled with dark fantasy, things that really messed me up and made me the man I am today!
So, if anything, it’s hopefully a return to that for me. We were encouraged by everyone to go dark. Make it scary. Don’t pull punches. Especially in the really grounded family stories that we’re telling, but also within the fantastical realm. Hopefully what we’re doing is blending humor, horror and heart. If you’re doing all three correctly, you can make people laugh, you can scare them out of their seats and you can make them cry…hopefully all within the same episode. If not, then within the span of the entire season. You want to paint with all of those palettes.
Horror is one of my favorite genres because it has so much catharsis to it. You want to be scared and feel the tension because then you get the release afterwards. You get the knowledge that you can face the monsters and come out the other side. There are a lot of travails along the way, but ultimately there is hope, redemption, and deliverance.
I think people like to use the word gritty and dark, and they’re not my favorite words. We didn’t want to be gritty, just to be gritty. What we wanted to do was age up the characters so that we could have more difficult conversations than if they were nine or ten years old, like they are in the books. One of my favorite lines from the book, which made it into the movie and the TV series, is when Jared says, “The only thing Simon and I have in common is that we can wear the same size.” That line destroys me. It’s so heartfelt. It’s so painful to talk about sibling rivalry, comparing yourself to somebody and wishing you could be as good and smart as they are. By making the characters teenagers instead, we get to have the deeper, emotional conversations and can make mistakes a little bit riskier for them in terms of what they’re up against.
What do you love about writing and working in this genre, and what are some of the more challenging aspects?
I think one of the major challenges is making sure that it feels relevant and fresh. There is so much that we are coming behind – amazing fantasy that we owe a lot to. What we don’t want to do is make something boring or trite, or something that people have seen before. One of the driving forces of this was that we want people to come away feeling like magic is real and that it could exist.
Tony and Holly described their book as an American fairy tale. That really touched me. My grandparents are immigrants, and they came here with nothing. They built a life for themselves and built a family. People have different experiences and the distinctly American experience isn’t a white English kid living under the stairs who gets an invitation to go to a magic academy. That type of storytelling has really dominated this genre. So we wanted to tell an American story that not only related to the Grace family, but to every creature design that we chose. I didn’t want a blonde-haired, blue-eyed fairy. I wanted a fairy that could speak to every kid around the world so that they could say, “That’s my fairy.” I wanted to make sure that what we had was familiarity to our creatures and our world, but also distinctive and more appealing because you can see yourself in them.
