When Spiderwick Chronicles creator Tony DiTerlizzi was a kid, studying lizards and eight-legged creatures in a South Florida library, he never imagined his magical stories and haunting tales would spin a web chock-full of films, video games and a lucrative book series! We caught up with Tony earlier this week in the middle of the pre-Spiderwick movie craze to see what it was like when he and co-creator Holly Black joined forces to put the fear of goblins, ghouls and of course those nasty little faeries in the nightmares of children everywhere! Before you take the kiddies out to this flick, read on to discover more Spiderwick than you'll find on the big screen and get some surprising Spiderwick sequel news before the film even hits theaters! And for more on The Spiderwick Chronicles check out our interview with director Mark Waters or our exclusive video interview.

How did you actually come up with the concept of Spiderwick?

I was quite an imaginative kid. I was one of those kids that kind of had his head in the clouds and did lots of drawings and made little books. I was about 11 or 12 and I loved the game Dungeons and Dragons. It was really big then, in the early 1980s. I loved a lot of the movies that were out then, like The Dark Crystal and Conan and Beastmaster. One summer I came up with this idea that these scientists made dragons and ghouls and goblins. They all had these funny Latin names like Fatt-is, Goblin-is, Eat-is. I made this little book, and then sort of moved on and did whatever else I did as a kid. I forgot about it, but years later I went on my first illustration jobs coming out of art school, and it was working for the company that actually produced Dungeons and Dragons. I met Holly Black, who came out to interview me for my illustration work for a magazine, and we were talking about what else I was working on. At that point, I had kind of blown the dust off that old project that I worked on when I was 12. I was starting to re-imagine it and had invented this Arthur Spiderwick character that was kind of like the James Audubon of the fairy world. And then off we went. My publisher at Simon and Shuster loved it but he wanted the story with modern kids. He didn't want it to be a guy from 100 years ago running from goblins and ghouls. At that point I realized I was sort of in over my head in terms of how big this project could be so I invited Holly along to help me out, because she knows all the fairy folklore inside and out. I wanted to be very concise and true to the folklore that has been around for hundreds of years.

Did the films you mentioned have a significant impact on your inspirations for creative designs?

Absolutely. It's interesting that there's a lot of fantasy that's really big right now due to the phenomena of Harry Potter, but I would also contribute that to a lot of kids growing up on fantasy in the 1980's, because it was really prevalent then and a lot of those kids are parents now.

Aside from those inspirations did you have any childhood experiences that were magical?

I grew up in South Florida and honestly I was always one of those kids that had pet bugs and lizards and snakes. I would go to the library, or we had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica's, when they were those big, giant brown books. I would look them [animals] up and I was always fascinated with nature and those strange things you find out about animals. I just always love that sort of thing. I think that really fueled a lot of the way Spiderwick was presented. So what we tried to do was take this old folklore but put a scientific rationale behind it.

Even though there is a heavy fantasy slant, it looks like there are a lot of realistic elements to the creatures and the film overall. Were you happy with the representations in the film?

Thrilled to death. First of all you've got two huge groups working on it. You have Phil Tippet, who reigns from back in Star Wars when he did special effects in The Empire Strikes Back and the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. This guy knows how to do creatures inside and out. Then you have Industrial Light & Magic, who also did special effects for Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter. Pablo Helman, who headed up their group, just did a fantastic job. I went and met with the teams who were groups of artists just like me. I was able to take part a little in the philosophy that went into what I was looking at, inspirationally, for a lot of the creature designs. I think they were then able to take that recipe and use it for their own needs. What a drawing of a goblin needs to do in a book or in paintings is much different than what a goblin needs to do when it's running around on screen making noise. I was really excited. Most of the stuff is almost directly from my artwork. Some things have changed but most of the changes I really like. They were actually more inspired.

So you were pretty involved in the film?

Holly and I and Mark Waters, who directed the film, sat with the producers and Said, "Look, we know you're going to do things and we know you have to because You're taking five books--each with their own plots and art--and you're turning them into a three-act, 90-minute structure. We told them to do the changes they needed to do and shuffle stuff around, but told them to remember the big thematic elements that drew them to it to begin with. As long as they kept those thematic elements we were happy. I think that openness and allowance for other people to get in our sandbox and do what they do best made it a great experience for everybody. We acted almost as consultants. We were able to help them with changes that they did make and keep the stories and incarnations of the stories on track. In the end we're absolutely thrilled with it. I just saw it for the sixth time!

When did you realize that Spiderwick had become much more that what you originally intended?

The books were doing really well out the gate. We didn't think they would do that well but we aimed them a little younger. Holly was inspired by a lot of the old folklore and I was inspired by the old fairytales, like Grimm's fairytales and Anderson's fairytales. I feel like the final film reflects that. It sort of reminds me of a modern day fairytale like the Brothers Grimm. You have normal, ordinary kids with no special powers who don't live in a land far, far away and they are dealing with, sadly, a modern-day, normal problem with a family going through divorce; and on top of that they've sort of lifted the veil of faeries and realized this stuff is all around them. There's a lot of immediacy to that. I think the kids portray the characters amazingly but it's easy to become one of the characters in and of themselves. You could easily say "Oh, I could be one of those kids taking adventures, just like Jared, Simon and Mallory did, and in my own backyard!

Now that Spiderwick is a film, it's also being transformed into a video game. Were you involved in that process as well?

We met with the game designers a couple times and would get random emails about different questions. They were fantastic. They loved the books and the source material, which is always really cool. They realized that, hey, they couldn't pack everything into the film but they wanted to put some of that stuff in the video game. The video game actually has more creatures, villains and events that happen in the book that didn't quite make it into the film. I think that says a lot! The design and everything is exactly how it was in the story so it's really great. I was talking to Sarah Bolger, who plays Mallory, and we were out in LA, so they gave us a gift bag with all of the books and the video game for the Wii, which the game designers were really excited about. In that game you can sense and catch faeries with the Wii nunchucks. So I said to her, "That's so weird, you're going to be at home playing yourself, playing Mallory, at home on the Wii." It's just really cool, and we hope kids like it.

So there are some things from Spiderwick in the video game that are not in the movie, but are there things from the movie in the game as well?

Oh yeah. If I'm not mistaken I believe the computer-generated models for the creatures were given to the game designers so they are literally using the same models as in the films.

Are the children identical as well?

They look a lot like them, but I'm not sure if they scanned or recreated them. I'll have to find out. It does look a lot like the kids though!

In the age of the prequel/sequel how would you feel if they decided to do a
sequel or offshoot film of Spiderwick?

Holly and I did our own sequel last year called Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles that involves three new kids who also encounter the faeries, and Jared and Simon show up to sort of help them as characters who have been through this before.

We all have our fingers and toes crossed right now to see how well the film does, and if we are so lucky to be able to have a sequel. I think there's enough material between what wasn't used in the film from the first five books and the sequels, all three of them, coming out one each year. There was one in September there will be one this fall and one next fall.

Are you working on anything else that fans should look out for?

I have a new book coming out this summer called Kenny & the Dragon, for the same age range as Spiderwick. It's about a little boy who is a bunny, whose parents are farmers and a dragon shows up on their hill one morning. And of course trouble and chaos ensues as one would hope when a dragon shows up on your property.

After writing about goblins, ghouls, dragons and creatures of the unknown what
is your own personal biggest fear?

Growing older. I don't mind getting older and wiser but I have an eight-month old daughter. People tell you it goes quick?and that eight months went fast! Even seeing Spiderwick happen: we published the first books in 2003 and here we are five years later. It went quick!