Roald Dahl is known as one of the world’s greatest storytellers. His timeless tales of wonder and imagination made children the victims and heroes, while adults were the unfair villains. Dark humor was also a staple of Dahl, poking fun at characters in jeopardy that rattled our sense of morality from a very young age. Dahl’s stories celebrate the meek and mild nature of people with a tinge of nostalgia. His most popular children’s books have been adapted for film and television, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and The Witches.
Most children’s books have found a wider audience through film and television. However, there are many other stories from the scrumdiddlyumptious writer that have entered obscurity over the years. Prequels like Wonka will share deeper character studies, but it ultimately shares the world we already know and read. Going back to a story, using what’s between the lines, is exciting to reinvent or rediscover what’s familiar, but it isn’t necessarily going forward. It’s only fair that Dahl’s other stories get adapted.
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8 Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Alfred A. Knopf
Not many have heard of, let alone read the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The reason being, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator has never been adapted for a visual medium. Puffin Audio Books and BBC Radio have produced an audio recording of the story, but it’s not the same as seeing those wonderful illustrations from Quentin Blake. The sequel to the chocolate adventure of Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka is being developed into an animated series for Netflix by the director of Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi. An animated or live-action adaptation for the big screen would be just as sweet.
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7 George’s Marvelous Medicine
Jonathan Cape
Eight-year-old George Kranky lives with his controlling grandmother, who relies on her prescription drugs. George decides to create his own miracle drug for his grandmother to take instead. The side effects take on small and large consequences. Dahl wrote the story as a love letter to doctors everywhere, as he advocated for vaccines and new treatments. The story shows the magic of medicine, how all its different elements come together to make people better. It also shows how too much medicine can be a bad thing as well. A simple story with a complex message would be a great adaptation.
6 My Uncle Oswald
Michael Joseph
My Uncle Oswald is one of Dahl’s adult novels, and for good reason. Oswald is a peculiar man who gives the title of uncle its bad reputation. He discovers an insect called the Sudanese Blister Beetle that enables sexual prowess and production. Oswald plots to become a sperm theft with the use of this beetle by stealing the sperm from the greatest minds from history. Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Albert Einstein, and more are having the sperm stolen by Uncle Oswald and sold to women in order to birth children from the world’s geniuses. The story is juvenile, raunchy, and oddball enough to be a movie.
5 Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen
Collins
Roald Dahl’s first adult novel, Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen, is inspired by Dahl’s time as a pilot for the Royal Air Force. The book is also a darker version of his first children’s book, The Gremlins. In the story, a Gremlin is seen dismantling the wing of an RAF pilot’s plane. The pilot’s squadron goes looking for the Gremlin, but the creature and the rest of its kind lie in wait, seeing that humans will bring their own demise. World War III and World War IV break out, destroying humanity and leaving the Gremlins as the only ones alive to inherit the Earth. However, the Gremlins realize they cannot exist without humans, and so, they perish as well. Dahl’s bleak novel was the first book in the United States to talk about nuclear war after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It should have its first adaptation as well.
4 The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
Penguin
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me tells the story of Billy, who dreams of having his own sweet shop. He meets a giraffe, pelican, and monkey, all of whom work for the Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company. Billy works alongside them, eventually finding themselves cleaning the windows of royalty, where they stop a cat burglar on the premises. They are rewarded with full-time employment by the Duke of Hampshire at the Hampshire House, and Billy is gifted his own sweet shop. The story does have callbacks to other Dahl works, including some of Wonka’s candies. A Dahl cinematic universe sounds like a fantastic idea.
3 The Minpins
Dahl’s final published work is about a group of little forest dwellers who live in the trees. Similar to The Borrowers and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Little Billy finds himself in a forbidden world known as the Forest of Sin, home to unspeakable creatures. He instead finds the Minpins who are terrorized by a real beast, the Red-Hot Smoke-Belching Gruncher. He defeats the Gruncher and kindles a long friendship with the Minpins thereafter.
2 The Twits
There are people in the world who do stupid things, but none are dumber than the Twits. A cruel and ugly couple who spend their days together pulling pranks on each other is dumb love at its finest. For example, Mrs. Twit sneaks her glass eye into Mr. Twit’s beer glass and when he finishes his drink, he screams, and she exclaims with laughter that she’s always watching him. A film about this dumb duo would be the smartest adaptation. Since 2003, a potential film has been proposed and a Netflix series scrapped, but an animated film is said to be in development as of April 2022.
1 The Vicar of Nibbleswicke
Century
Published posthumously, Dahl’s story presents a dyslexic Reverend Robert Lee, who suffers from a rare form of word blindness: Back-to-Front Dyslexia. Lee will say certain words backwards without knowing it, causing confusion and comedy with anyone he talks to. Dahl and Blake donated their rights to the book to support the Dyslexia Institute (now Dyslexia Action) in London. A fun bit of wordplay from the wonderful wordsmith would make for a good film about disabilities and overcoming them too.
