'But then when I'd seen it once or twice, and I was able to sit back and relax and look at it not as a dramatization of my story - it's like handing a baby over, you know?' Morpurgo describes his first impression of the stage adaptation and what was missing from his book: 'Picky, picky, picky!' he said. horses so extraordinary you forget they're not real.įor the stage adaptation, details from the book had to be changed. The story is told by larger-than-life puppets. The only thing that kept him sane was that he said the he would talk to his horse.' I was there with horses.' And he started talking, and the more he talked the more upset he became, and the more engaged I became in what had happened to him - this young man who'd come away from a completely pastoral background and had been thrust into this hideous, hideous trench warfare. 'He said, 'I was over the Devon yeomanry.

'I said, 'What regiment were you with?'' Morpurgo recalled. It was inspired by conversations he had at age 17 at his local pub in the picturesque English village of Iddesleigh in Devon with an elderly WWI veteran named Albert Weeks. Michael Morpurgo intended it more as an anti-war statement. Long before a single scene of Spielberg's film was shot, 'War Horse' was a novel for young adults published in 1982. That really pulled me.' Will and Kate at 'War Horse' royal premiere 24 photos Spielberg said he took on the job of making the film because 'I just loved Joey, and I loved his relationship with Albert, and I just hated to see them separated and I couldn't wait to see how they would ever come together again.

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