Several longtime Spielberg collaborators—including producer Kathleen Kennedy, cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, editor Michael Kahn, production designer Rick Carter and composer John Williams—worked on the film.

At an auction, farmer Ted Narracott outbids his landlord Lyons for the colt, to the dismay of his wife Rose, because the family needs a working horse that can plough the field, not an Irish Hunter.

In 1914, as war with Germany is declared, heavy rain ruins the family's crops, forcing Ted to sell Joey to the army.

[12] After observing a young boy with a stammer forming a fond relationship with and talking fluently to a horse at a farm run by Morpurgo's charity Farms for City Children, Morpurgo found a way to tell the story through the horse and its relations with the various people it meets before and during the course of the war: a young Devon farmboy, a British cavalry officer, a German soldier, and an old Frenchman and his granddaughter.

The temptation was the chance for an iconic film about the First World War, perhaps as great as All Quiet on the Western Front with its overpowering sense of waste."

Lack of finances meant that it was an informal arrangement, with the film rights not formally sold by Morpurgo to Guest's production company and no one being paid for the work they undertook.

[20][21][22] After discussions with Revel Guest, on 16 December 2009, it was announced that DreamWorks Pictures had acquired the film rights to the book, with Spielberg stating: "From the moment I read Michael Morpurgo's novel War Horse, I knew this was a film I wanted DreamWorks to make … Its heart and its message provide a story that can be felt in every country.

[37] Speaking at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2011, actor Peter Mullan said that he took the part not just because Spielberg was directing, but also because of the "beautiful, really nice script".

[37][46] It had been rumored in the previous week that Eddie Redmayne had been cast in the lead role as Albert Narracott;[47] however, relatively unknown stage actor Jeremy Irvine was chosen instead.

[60][61] Initially, Spielberg was only going to have four or five days' worth of second unit material shot in Devon, but after Kathleen Kennedy sent him photographs of the various locations she had scouted, he decided to cut other elements of the story to enable more filming to take place in countryside that Kennedy described as "so extraordinarily beautiful and absolutely perfect for the story".

[63][64] Ditsworthy Warren House, an isolated Grade II listed building near Sheepstor on Dartmoor, served as the Narracott family's farmhouse, and many scenes were filmed in the surrounding area.

[69] When actor Peter Mullan won the Golden Shell Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain for his film Neds, Spielberg insisted that Mullan should attend the ceremony to accept his award in person on 26 September 2010, and rearranged the War Horse shooting schedule accordingly.

[72][73][74][75] Some residents of Castle Combe were angered by the imposition of tightened security within the village, claiming they could not enter without waiting at perimeter barriers until breaks in filming.

[30][57][78][79] Shooting of wartime camp scenes also took place at Bourne Wood near Farnham in Surrey, a frequent location for filming, for about two weeks beginning on 4 October 2010.

[103] According to Spielberg, the film's only digital effects were three shots lasting three seconds, which were undertaken to ensure the safety of the horse involved: "That's the thing I'm most proud of.

"[21] Actor Tom Hiddleston said that Spielberg had "seen the stage play and he wanted to retain the magic and heartbeat of that … It's a moving, powerful story you can take children to see, but it is still very upsetting … People die, and it is war.

But while Spielberg isn't one to sugarcoat the horrors of war, he's just the director to fill this Great War-set story of a boy and his horse with saddlebags of heart and soul.

[113] DreamWorks executive Stacey Snider said, "The reaction to the footage—which [Spielberg] usually never shows—was that it feels like a big, holiday movie … It just became inevitable that we would move it.

Due to the usual embargo on photos and videos being taken and made public during Spielberg shoots, very few images emerged, with the majority being snatched paparazzi shots.

[114] The first ten official photographs were made public by DreamWorks in several releases between 11 and 14 March 2011, in Empire magazine and in an article in Entertainment Weekly.

[116] On 29 March, DreamWorks presented behind-the-scenes footage introduced on film by Spielberg to theatre owners at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

[126][127] Press screenings for critics were first held in New York and Los Angeles on 24 November 2011, although there was an embargo on official reviews being published at that time.

[131][132] On 4 December 2011, the film's world premiere was held at the Avery Fisher Hall of New York City's Lincoln Center, where the Tony award-winning Broadway production of War Horse was playing at the neighboring Vivian Beaumont Theater.

Although it was not one of Spielberg's biggest box office successes, it was the highest-grossing World War I film of all time until Wonder Woman overtook it six years later.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Technically superb, proudly sentimental, and unabashedly old-fashioned, War Horse is an emotional drama that tugs the heartstrings with Spielberg's customary flair.

[141] Giving the film an A− grade, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "The project is tailor-made for Saving Private Ryan Spielberg, the war-story specialist, as well as for E.T.

"[142] Rex Reed of The New York Observer gave the film 4 out of 4 stars and said, "War Horse is a don't-miss Spielberg classic that reaches true perfection.

"[144] Richard Roeper praised War Horse by saying, "What a gorgeous, breathtaking, epic adventure this is," and gave the film 4.5 out of 5 stars.

[145] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe said that the film was a work of "full-throated Hollywood classicism" that looks back to the craftsmanship and sentimentality of John Ford and other legends of the studio era, and gave it 3 out of 4 stars.

[146] Conversely, Simon Winder of The Guardian wrote that the film, "despite twisting and turning to be even-handed, simply could not help itself and, like some faux-reformed alcoholic, gorged itself on an entire miniature liqueur selection of Anglo-German clichés".