The idea of The Fabelmans - a semi-autobiographical cine-memoir inspired by a young Steven Spielberg’s life - has existed at least as long as his first collaboration with screenwriter Tony Kushner (Lincoln, West Side Story). On their first night of filming 2005’s Munich, Kushner casually asked Spielberg what had made him want to become a director. The resulting answer - a story about his formative years - felt to Kushner like the basis of a movie.
Though he suggested the idea then, they’d collaborate on three more screenplays (filming two) before as cowriters, a first for their partnership. It wasn’t until September 2020 that their collaboration began in earnest. “We got the first draft done in two months,” Kushner tells . “It was three days a week, four hours a day. I never work with anything like that kind of discipline. And even Steven was impressed with how fast that came together. So that was a wild difference.”
