So why am I telling you all of this? Because, overall, James And The Giant Peach the motion picture was quintessentially British, much like the book. (He was originally involved in this film, but sadly had to depart, leaving the door open for Wes Anderson.) It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that Henry Selick later went on to direct the stunning Coraline. Don’t get me wrong, it took some liberties with the book’s plot… but I didn’t care! It was (and still is) a great adaptation in my eyes. I still watch it now! It is a fantastic, funny, quite scary film. I had the film on videotape, and asked for it again on DVD at a later date. However, the quality of the film and my enjoyment of it is still crystal clear. So next year arrived and my Dad somehow managed to get me advance preview tickets of the film a week before release, in some old theatre. Yet the reply was nonetheless delightful: Spielberg wouldn’t be directing a live action film version, but Dreamworks were planning to do a stop motion version the next year! Looking back, I am pretty sure the responding letter was from some underling rather than from Spielberg himself. I remember writing to Stephen Spielberg at the age of 8, asking him to direct a film version of James And The Giant Peach. It was, and still very much is, a match made in heaven.
Fans of Dahl will also undoubtedly know of Quentin Blake, an artist who was brilliant at perfectly capturing what Dahl had written with his superb illustrations. It is pretty safe to say that Roald Dahl was one of the authors that sold me on reading as a young boy.
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