Steven Spielberg said his parents had been "nagging" him to put them on the big screen prior to their deaths. "They were actually nagging me, 'When are you going to tell that story about our family, Steve?' And so this was something they were very enthusiastic about," he said. He also shared what finally prompted him to make The Fabelmans: "I started seriously thinking, if I had to make one movie I haven't made yet, something that I really want to do on a very personally atomic level, what would that be? And there was only one story I really wanted to tell." He also said The Fabelmans is "the first coming-of-age story I've ever told." "My life with my mom and dad taught me a lesson, which I hope this film in a small way imparts," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "Which is, when does a young person in a family start to see his parents as human beings? In my case, because of what happened between the ages of 7 and 18, I started to appreciate my mom and dad not as parents but as real people."
