Trailer
Plot summary
The morning after thirteen-year-old Josh Baskin puts a coin into a carnival fortune-telling machine called Zoltar and wishes to be big, he wakes in a grown man's body. The card the machine gave him said his wish was granted, yet it had been unplugged. He returns to the carnival to find it gone, and at home his mother, taking him for a stranger, chases him from the house. Josh finds his best friend Billy at school and proves who he is with a song known only to the two of them. The two of them learn that finding Zoltar again will take at least six weeks, so Josh rents a room in a New York City flophouse and takes a job entering data at the MacMillan Toy Company.
Cast
- Harvey Milleras Personnel Director
- Kimberlee M. Davisas Cynthia Benson
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Big (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Robert De Niro was cast in the lead role with Elizabeth Perkins, then dropped out due to "scheduling conflicts" and was replaced by Tom Hanks.
- Andy García read for Josh, but one of the studio executives did not want to spend $18 million for "a kid to grow to be Puerto Rican" - and García is actually Cuban.
- Kevin Costner, Steve Guttenberg, Warren Beatty, Dennis Quaid and Matthew Modine were all offered the role of Josh and all turned it down; Quaid turned it down for another project, a decision he later regretted.
- Anne's brother Steven Spielberg was attached to direct and wanted to cast Harrison Ford as Josh, but he dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with Empire of the Sun.
- Big grossed nearly $115 million in the United States and Canada and $151.7 million worldwide, and it was the first feature film directed by a woman to gross over $100 million.
- The fictional Zoltar Speaks fortune-telling machine in the film was modeled after the real-life 1960s machine Zoltan, the name differing by one letter.
