The 10 Best Roald Dahl Film Adaptations

Forty-five years after first introducing kids and big kids alike to the wonders of Hugtight glue, bird pie, and wormy spaghetti, Roald Dahl’s The Twits has finally been made into a movie. The animated musical—which features an eclectic voice cast including Oscar-winner Natalie Portman, much-loved character actor Margo Martindale, and British stand-up comedian Johnny Vegas—hits Netflix on October 17, joining a lengthy list of films that have used the beloved author’s works as inspiration. From friendly capers and fantastic animations to wonderful anthologies and witchy horrors, here’s a look at 10 of the most scrumdiddlyumptious.

36 Hours (1964)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
The BFG (1989)
Danny, the Champion of the World (1989)
The Witches (1990)
Matilda (1996)
James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Esio Trot (2015)
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024)

36 Hours (1964)

Hollywood’s first brush with Roald Dahl’s world wasn’t based on the mischief and mayhem of a children’s classic, but a WWII thriller first published in Harper’s Magazine. George Seaton’s take on Dahl’s short story “Beware of the Dog” differs slightly from the source material (which was also adapted for the 1989 TV movie Breaking Point). It changes the location from Vichy France to occupied Germany (or is it?), the protagonist from an English RAF pilot to U.S. Army major, and the inciting incident from a failed air mission to a kidnapping.

But the gist of the story generally remains the same: The Nazis trick James Garner’s wounded military man into believing he’s just woken up in a U.S. Army hospital six years after his side won the war so they can extract national secrets from him. The story requires more suspension of disbelief than what you need to believe in a big friendly giant. Still, 36 Hours remains a taut and tense Hitchcockian thriller, proving that Dahl’s ability to conceive gripping stories wasn’t reserved solely for kids.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Forget the treacly Timothée Chalamet prequel—and certainly forget the pointless Tim Burton remake. The finest page-to-screen transfer of 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remains the first, even if it famously failed to meet the approval of the author himself. Dahl decried the shift of focus from its titular wide-eyed youngster to maverick confectioner Willy Wonka while also arguing that its score was too sickly sweet.

But in this instance, the author wasn’t the most reliable assessor of his own work: The changes allowed Gene Wilder to deliver an all-time great performance and spawned a string of instantly classic songs (“Pure Imagination,” “The Candy Man”) on its way to an Academy Award nod. Also boasting brilliantly kitsch set and costume designs and a selection box of inventive punishments (who can forget the sight of bubblegum-blowing brat Violet Beauregarde ballooning into a giant blueberry?), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory set a benchmark higher than the effects of a Fizzy Lifting Drink.

You Might Also Like ...

Add Mental Floss as a preferred news source!

The BFG (1989)

The BFG’s 2016 adventure may have had a whopping $140 million budget, state-of-the-art motion capture technology, and none other than Steven Spielberg at its disposal. But it still failed to capture the charm of its 1989 predecessor. The story of a larger-than-life elderly man whisking an orphaned girl (modeled on Dahl’s real-life granddaughter Sophie) into a world of dream catching, fleshlumpeater evading, and snozzcumber snaffling is the author at his most whimsical. And Brian Cosgrove, the co-founder of the animation studio behind Count Duckula, Danger Mouse, and The Wind in the Willows, was the perfect man to bring the whizpopping tale to life. In fact, the notoriously difficult-to-please Dahl was so enraptured by its 2D watercolors, mostly faithful narrative, and British sitcom legend David Jason’s endearing voice performance as the titular BFG that he responded to its first screening with a standing ovation.

Danny, the Champion of the World (1989)

Premiering on the Disney Channel in the States but given a theatrical release in the UK, Danny, the Champion of the World is perhaps the least fantastical Dahl film—its biggest set piece involves a flock of inebriated pheasants—but it still has buckets of charm to spare. Jeremy Irons plays a widowed father who, alongside his 9-year-old boy (played by Irons’s real-life son Samuel), hatches a plan to stop Robbie Coltrane’s unscrupulous lord of the manor from purchasing their land. Director Gavin Millar bathes the post-war tale in a warm nostalgic glow perfect for watching on a rainy Sunday afternoon. But by tackling themes of environmental destruction and corporal punishment (the latter of which Dahl routinely experienced as a child), this underrated gem triumphantly avoids drifting into schmaltz.

The Witches (1990)

Another much-loved classic later given an inferior remake, The Witches was helmed by Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now, Bad Timing), master of the psychosexual drama. Little wonder, then, that it remains the darkest and creepiest entry in Dahl’s filmography.

An orphaned American boy and his Norwegian grandmother head to the British coast for some rest and recuperation, only to stumble across a coven of cackling witches—masquerading as a children’s charity convention—that are planning to turn every single kid into a mouse. Anjelica Huston gives a deliciously wicked performance as the maniacal Grand High Witch: the moment she reveals her true claw-handed, pointy-nosed, wart-covered self is truly the stuff of nightmares. (The actress wore Jim Henson Company prosthetics that took six or seven hours to apply to pull off the look.)

Dahl, however, was more perturbed by the changes made, particularly the happier ending in which our hero returns to human form. He described the film as “utterly appalling.”

Matilda (1996)

Danny DeVito pulled triple duty in this, the first of many Matilda iterations since Dahl’s original 1986 novel: He served as narrator and director and joined real-life wife Rhea Perlman to play the titular prodigy’s neglectful parents. Mara Wilson is charm personified as the precocious bookworm who discovers revenge is a dish best served psychokinetically. But it’s Pam Ferris who steals the show as the ferocious and formidable elementary school principal Mrs. Trunchbull, whether forcing the brilliantly named Bruce Bogtrotter to eat his own weight in chocolate cake or hammer throwing another disobedient student by her pigtails. Unlike Tim Minchin’s stage adaptation, and its 2022 transfer to the big screen, this darkly comic classic didn’t need to make a big song and dance to entertain.

James and the Giant Peach (1996)

There were several musical numbers in 1996’s other Dahl offering, the story of a young boy who acquires a bag of crocodile tongues that can super-size anything they touch. In fact, Randy Newman received an Academy Award nomination for his whimsical score. But it’s the inspired switch from live-action to stop-motion animation that made James and the Giant Peach such a delight. While Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes play the despicable aunts to perfection, the flight of fancy only truly lifts off when the titular youngster—orphaned thanks to a parent-eating rhino—and his new anthropomorphic buddies cross the Atlantic in cartoonish form. Previously considered unfilmable due to its dreamlike nature (Dahl had repeatedly rejected numerous adaptations before his death two years earlier), The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick makes the fable look like light work.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

From George Clooney and Meryl Streep to Bill Murray and Owen Wilson, Fantastic Mr. Fox undoubtedly boasts the starriest Dahl cast—although, of course, this Hollywood who’s who appear in anthropomorphic stop-motion form. Drawing upon his trademark meticulous attention to detail and picture book aesthetics, Wes Anderson treats his literary hero with respect while simultaneously imposing his own stylistic and narrative quirks: The auteur expands upon the morality tale to delve deeper into issues of class, gender, and power, and its otherworld is defined by an autumnal color palette (there’s at least one shade of orange in every single frame). Part heist movie, part social parable, part existential drama, this obvious labor of love was only denied a Best Animated Feature Oscar by Pixar’s Up.

Esio Trot (2015)

Published just two months before his death in 1990, Esio Trot saw Dahl eschew any sense of cruelty and instead deliver a golden years love story that effortlessly warmed the cockles of the heart. So who better to help adapt it than the man behind Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually? Co-penned by Richard Curtis, the BBC TV movie finds both Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench playing against type, the former as a desperately shy retiree who spends his days tending to his balcony garden and the latter as a free-spirited widower who freely admits she “never was the brightest bulb in the chandelier.” Of course, it’s never in doubt that the two lonely souls will get together. But thanks to its endearing performances, an immersive apartment block setting, and a delightful wooing scheme involving a fake spell, elaborate pulley system, and no fewer than 100 tortoises, the fanciful romance still compels throughout.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024)

Fourteen years after giving one of Dahl’s most famous stories his hyper-stylized treatment, Wes Anderson did the same for one of his most obscure. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a gambling addict who adopts a mystical form of yoga that allows him to cheat his way to a blackjack fortune. But in a Robin Hood-style twist, he eventually uses his ill-gotten gains to help those in much greater need. The 2023 short film nabbed Anderson an Oscar (so far, it’s the only Dahl adaptation to have done so).

Anderson next tackled some other Dahl stories—“The Swan,” “The Ratcher,” and “Poison”— in quick succession. A year later, all four shorts were combined into a feature-length anthology that was presented as a series of films screened on a fictitious UK network in the late 1970s. By keeping Dahl's prose largely intact, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More highlighted how the author was as talented a wordsmith as he was a storyteller.