Clik here to view.
Taika Waititi Will Turn Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into Two Netflix...
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is getting two new adaptations, and they’re both from Taika Waititi. The newly minted Academy Award winner will be writing, directing, and executive producing two...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jo Walton’s Reading List: March 2021
Another lockdown month, at home, lots of reading, not a lot of anything else. But thank goodness for books, there were a lot of great ones in March. I read twenty books in a wide variety of genres and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Timothée Chalamet Will Star in a Willy Wonka Origin Movie
Paul Atreides is your Wonka now. Deadline reports that Timothée Chalamet, known for every recent movie that calls for a twentysomething man with dark hair and cheekbones (including the one pictured...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dev Patel Alert! Check Out the All-Star Cast for Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl...
Netflix’s all-encompassing deal with the Roald Dahl estate is bearing fruit (insert James and the Giant Peach joke here). The streaming platform already has two Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Emma Thompson Is a Terrifying Miss Trunchbull In the Trailer for Nextflix’s...
Last year, Netflix bought the Roald Dahl Story Company. Three years before that, the streaming platform acquired the rights to turn a huge list of Dahl’s beloved and classic stories into animated...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Five Authors Who Adapted Others’ Stories (Plus Their Own)
Here’s a sad truth about writing for most authors: This is not a lucrative business. Years can go by between publications, and there’s never a guarantee anyone will end up earning royalties on their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Did We Do to Deserve This Manifestation of Wonka?
Where this trailer for Wonka is concerned, it turns out that not even the words “from the director of Paddington” can offer much comfort. No one, I am fairly certain, asked for a Willy Wonka origin...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Henry Sugar Is Just the First of Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl Adaptations
This was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the works being covered here wouldn’t exist. Ahead of its arrival on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar Trailer Shows How Wes Anderson Is Using...
Wes Anderson’s collection of short adaptations of Roald Dahl short stories comes to Netflix later this month, and we’ve got a trailer for the first of them! The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Fey Candy Man: Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka Is Unlike Any Other
Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three. I have never written about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This is perhaps not relevant by itself—it’s not as though it’s important for film...
View ArticleNow THIS is How to Do Transatlantic Travel: James and the Giant Peach
James and the Giant Peach begins in sudden, shocking tragedy, as young James Henry Trotter loses his parents to a rampaging rhinoceros. (Strikingly unusual deaths would remain a characteristic of...
View ArticleTurning Tragedy into the Fantastic: Roald Dahl
Author Roald Dahl lived a life almost as fabulous and unbelievable as the fiction of his books. Born in Wales to Norwegian immigrants, he lost his father and a sister when he was only three, events...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Taking the Animal Point of View: Fantastic Mr Fox and The Magic Finger
Since it’s a quiet week around here at Tor.com, I’m going to avoid my usual method of following along in publication order, saving Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for next week and focusing on two...
View ArticleA Fantasy of Chocolate: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The success of James and the Giant Peach encouraged Roald Dahl to write another children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Filled with Dahl’s fury at multiple aspects of contemporary life...
View ArticleThe Ambiguities of Growing Up: Danny the Champion of the World
You will learn as you get older, just as I learned that autumn, that no father is perfect. Grown-ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets. Some have quirkier quirks and deeper secrets...
View ArticleSCRAM, Vermicious Knids! Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
“I must admit,” said Mr. Wonka, “that for the first time in my life I find myself at a bit of a loss.” Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator begins by swiftly catching us up with the events from the...
View ArticleThe Monkeys Strike Back: The Twits
Even by the standards of writer Roald Dahl, The Twits starts out on an unusually disgusting note, with a rant about beards followed by an overly detailed description of just what a certain Mr. Twit...
View ArticleThis Is No Way to Practice Medicine: George’s Marvelous Medicine
Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvelous Medicine is dedicated, rather cruelly, to doctors. I say “rather cruelly,” because much of the book is a fierce indictment of modern medicines, which, in Dahl’s...
View ArticleA Land of Giants and Dreams: The BFG
Sophie, an orphan, is suffering a major attack of insomnia, brought on, author Roald Dahl suggests, by the magic of moonlight, or perhaps by the fact that she’s living in a dormitory and has lost her...
View ArticleTransformation and Death: The Witches
“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.” After the tragic death of his parents in a car accident when he is only seven, the...
View Article