LOS ANGELES - Steven Spielberg has tackled just about everything — from raging dinos to a killer Great White to “Giant Country” in next month’s The BFG.

But what he won’t be doing is blasting off into space. Specifically to a galaxy far, far away.

“I’m never going to make a Star Wars film. That’s not my genre,” he tells a group of international reporters at a recent press day for his upcoming Disney film. “It’s certainly my buddy’s — the Thomas Edison of science fiction, George Lucas, who created the entire series. But that was never for me. I’m just a fan; I’m just with everybody else in the audience watching them.”

The BFG marks Spielberg’s first collaboration with Disney and his final film with the late screenwriter Melissa Mathison (E.T.), who adapts Roald Dahl’s children’s classic.

It’s the Oscar-winning director’s first feature aimed squarely at kids in five years, and kicks off a wave of upcoming titles — in the next year he’ll direct The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and Ready Player One before making a fifth Indiana Jones instalment.

The BFG reunites Spielberg with his Bridge of Spies star Mark Rylance (who won Best Supporting Actor at this year’s Oscars) and newcomer Ruby Barnhill in a story of a lonely orphan and her giant friend.

But its fantastical elements — including extensive CG and motion capture — aren’t a primer for anything he may do next.

“This was an open and closed-ended excursion in the imagination of magic,” Spielberg says. “I haven’t done anything really in my entire career to do with alchemy; real magic. So for me (The BFG) was an original adventure and I had the best time on it. I worked for three years on it and the worst moment I had was when I finished the movie.

“That was the worst moment. When I finished the colour correction, the soundtrack and the mix, (composer John) Williams had finished his brilliant score and I was faced with the fact that I wasn’t going to return to the film again.

“It was at that moment I realized how deeply in love I was with this project.”

The BFG opens July 1.

Twitter: @markhdaniell

MDaniell@postmedia.com