Bridge to Terabithia

Gábor Csupó’s 2007 film follows Jess, an outsider at school, and Leslie, the new girl, as they invent a kingdom called Terabithia in the woods. Katherine Paterson wrote the novel after her son David’s best friend, eight-year-old Lisa Hill, was killed by lightning. David, co-writer with Jeff Stockwell and a producer, said a lousy film would have felt like profiteering on his friend’s death. The ads centred on the two children entering a fantasy world, a scene that comes at the end. Csupó said the filmmakers had nothing to do with that campaign and would be in trouble if audiences expected Harry Potter; David Paterson’s first reaction to the trailer was that his mother would hate it. Weta Digital built the creatures; its supervisor Matt Aitken named the two big previsualised effects scenes as the midway fight and the closing view across the creek. Csupó said the book mentions the imaginary battles only briefly, so effects stayed minimal, and the leads were aged up slightly for its first innocent love. It was shot around Auckland, New Zealand. A good fit if you accept a film weighted toward school, the school bus and home, with big effects saved for the middle and end. Not for a child sold a fantasy adventure by the ads and unprepared for a sudden death.