90 Fun Facts About James and the Giant Peach

After a plane cuts its seagull strings, James's giant peach lands on which New York landmark?

The Empire State Building's spire spears the peach, bringing out police and firemen before the city's children eat the fruit down to its stone.

In the 1996 Giant Peach film, what magic does the mysterious old man hand James in a bag?

Crocodile tongues were meant to work their magic on James, but he trips and spills the bag, and the wriggling green things escape into the soil beneath a withered peach tree.

When James's giant peach appears over New York in Dahl's novel, what do crowds first mistake it for?

A bomb is the first guess of panicking New Yorkers, and once the peach has landed the police take its giant bugs for visitors from Mars.

Which sky-dwellers, makers of hail and rainbows, pelt James's peach after the Centipede mocks them?

The Cloud-Men hurl cans of rainbow paint that set the Centipede solid as a statue, and only the rain from their faucets frees him.

Unlike in Dahl's novel, what becomes of Aunts Sponge and Spiker in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

They survive and follow James to New York, where they come at him with fire axes until Miss Spider wraps them in silk and the police arrest them; the book simply flattens them under the fruit.

Which composer wrote the songs and score of the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film, earning its only Oscar nomination?

Randy Newman was Disney's suggestion after its music division turned down the director's first choice as 'too weird', and his songs include 'My Name Is James' and 'Eating the Peach'.

Once James enters the fruit, the 1996 Giant Peach film shifts into a brighter dream world its director compared to which classic?

The Wizard of Oz was the model: the live-action opening is kept to muted greys and greens, and the director saved the animation and saturated colour for the world inside the peach.

Puffin's 2023 Giant Peach edits broke Dahl's order never to change so much as what in his books?

A single comma was the limit Dahl set in a recorded chat with the painter Francis Bacon, yet the 2023 Giant Peach rewrote whole verses of the Centipede's song about the two aunts.

Which of the bugs in Dahl's novel was cut from the 1996 Giant Peach film to lighten the animation load?

The Silkworm's one job in the book, spinning thread to harness the seagulls, was handed to Miss Spider on screen, so the character simply vanished.

Which child actor played James on screen and voiced his animated double in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Paul Terry was picked from hundreds of candidates after a casting search in England, his director recalling that when the boy read, it 'just knocked me over'.

Once the peach is as big as a house, what do Aunts Sponge and Spiker do with it?

Sell tickets to see it: the aunts fence off the peach and charge tourists, while James is locked indoors and watches the crowds through his bedroom bars.

In Dahl's novel, where does the 'queer ramshackle house' stand in which Aunts Sponge and Spiker keep James?

On top of a high hill, in a garden James is never allowed to leave, so for three years he sees no other children and is called 'you disgusting little beast' instead of his name.

What does the Centipede do in Dahl's novel that sends James's giant peach rolling away from the aunts?

Cuts through its stem, and the freed peach crushes both aunts flat before leaving a trail of wreckage on its way down to the sea.

Rolling towards the sea in Dahl's novel, James's runaway peach smashes through which kind of building?

A chocolate factory lies in the peach's path, three years before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory appeared, and one illustrated edition even paints the name WONKA on its wall.

At the end of Dahl's novel, what does James do because so many children want his story?

Writes it down as a book, and Dahl's last line reveals that the book James wrote is the very one the reader has just finished.

Which of the peach's bugs does James dangle as bait to lure a flock of seagulls down to the fruit?

The Earthworm, pink and legless, is the bait the gulls dive for, and in the film he is later rewarded with a job as a skin-care company's mascot.

The Centipede in James and the Giant Peach boasts of a hundred legs, but Dahl gives him how many?

42 legs is the real tally for the crew's boisterous rascal, who later tumbles overboard mid-flight and has to be fished back by James.

In Dahl's novel, which animal escapes from London Zoo and eats James's parents on a shopping trip?

A rhinoceros eats them when James is four, and the orphan is packed off to two aunts who work him hard and never let him play with another child.

After New York's children eat the giant peach, where is its stone set up as James's new home?

Central Park is where the peach stone becomes a house, and James, who once had no one to play with, now has children calling every day to hear his story.

Which Absolutely Fabulous star plays the bony Aunt Spiker in the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film?

Joanna Lumley, Patsy Stone of Absolutely Fabulous, plays Spiker in the flesh in the film's live-action opening, before James crawls into the peach and the story turns to animation.

Which BAFTA winner for The Age of Innocence plays the fat Aunt Sponge in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Miriam Margolyes plays Sponge in the flesh and then lends her voice to one of the bugs in the animated stretch, doing double duty in the film.

Which In the Name of the Father Oscar nominee plays the old man and narrates the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Pete Postlethwaite's character hands James a bag and promises that marvellous things will happen, and the boy promptly trips and spills it on his way home.

Which Jaws star voices the swaggering Centipede in the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film?

Richard Dreyfuss, Hooper in Jaws, speaks the Centipede's lines, but a second actor takes over whenever the character sings.

Which Thelma & Louise star voices Miss Spider in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Susan Sarandon won her Dead Man Walking Oscar less than three weeks before the film opened, and her Miss Spider, the bug James saves from his aunts, ends up running a nightclub.

Which actor, Mozart in the original stage Amadeus, voices the Grasshopper in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Simon Callow created Mozart in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus at the National Theatre in 1979, and his Grasshopper ends the film as a concert musician in New York.

Which Frasier star voices the motherly Mrs Ladybug in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Jane Leeves, Frasier's Daphne Moon, gives the Ladybug her voice, and the film's epilogue has the kindly bug set up in New York as an obstetrician.

Tim Burton produced the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film, but who directed it?

Henry Selick had also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas for Burton, and he first met Dahl's book through a Disney storyboard artist who had loved it since third grade.

In Dahl's novel, how does New York honour James and the bugs once officials hear his tale?

Ticker-tape parade is the welcome: James and his friends ride in an open limousine with the peach on a truck behind, and by the end the city's children have eaten the fruit down to the stone.

Besides a mechanical shark, which undead foes does the 1996 Giant Peach film add that Dahl's book lacks?

Skeletal pirates guard a sunken ship in icy northern waters, where the Centipede dives for a compass after letting the peach drift off course and has to be rescued.

In the 1996 Giant Peach film, the beast that ate James's parents returns over New York in what form?

A thunderstorm in the shape of the beast bears down on the peach and strikes it with lightning, and James's stand against it is the film's climax before the fall onto the city.

At the end of the 1996 Giant Peach film, the Centipede campaigns for which New York office?

Mayor of New York is the office the Centipede runs for in the film's epilogue, a change from Dahl's novel, where he ends up as vice-president of a boot company.

At the end of the 1996 Giant Peach film, the Glowworm takes which lighting job in New York?

The Statue of Liberty's torch is where the Glowworm, the peach's lamp throughout Dahl's book, ends up once the crew settle in New York.

At the end of the 1996 Giant Peach film, the Grasshopper becomes a concert performer on which instrument?

Violin fits him: in Dahl's book the Old-Green-Grasshopper makes music by rubbing his leg against his wing and calls his own body a kind of violin, and the film hands him a real one.

Goodspeed Musicals, where the Giant Peach stage musical premiered in 2010, earlier launched which Broadway hit about an orphan?

Annie had its world premiere at the Goodspeed Opera House in 1976 before going to Broadway; the peach musical took another road and is now licensed mainly to regional and youth theatres.

The 1996 Giant Peach film lost its only Oscar nomination, for its score, to which Jane Austen adaptation?

Emma won a category the Academy had split off after Disney musicals kept taking the score award, and it made Rachel Portman the first female composer to win a scoring Oscar.

Which British singer was first choice for the Giant Peach film's songs, until Disney called him 'too weird'?

Elvis Costello was keen, but the director recalled that at Disney's music division 'their alarms just went off' and the answer was no, so the job went to a composer the studio trusted.

Which director led a 2020 charity reading of James and the Giant Peach with Chris Hemsworth and Cate Blanchett?

Taika Waititi read the story in ten instalments on YouTube to raise money for Partners In Health, the medical charity co-founded by Dahl's daughter Ophelia.

Dennis Potter's rejected early script for the Giant Peach film alarmed Disney by turning the sharks into what?

Nazis were Potter's twist, in a draft set during the Second World War; Disney's chairman asked why they were in the film, and after Potter died in 1994 a new script was commissioned.

Joe Ranft pitched a Giant Peach film to Disney through Pixar, but the studio chose which project instead?

Toy Story was one of three ideas Pixar put to Disney, alongside the peach and the picture book Dinosaur Bob, and Disney was most excited by the one about toys coming to life.

Which Edward Norton film beat the Giant Peach film to number one on its opening weekend in April 1996?

Primal Fear, in its second week, took $8.1 million to the peach's $7.5 million, and the family film went on to gross less in America than its $38 million budget.

The 1996 Giant Peach film won the top feature prize at which of the world's major animation festivals?

Annecy, the French festival founded in 1960, gave the peach its prize for best animated feature in 1997, a warmer verdict than its single Oscar nomination.

The 1996 Giant Peach film opens in live action, then switches to which technique once James enters the peach?

Stop-motion animation takes over because Disney balked at the cost of the director's first plan, a real boy acting among puppets for the whole film, so live action was kept to the opening and the New York ending.

Dahl turned down film offers for the Giant Peach in his lifetime; who finally approved the 1996 version?

His widow Felicity, executor of his estate, sold the rights to Disney and later said Roald 'would have been delighted with what they did with James'.

Which illustrator first drew James and the Giant Peach only in 1995, 34 years after the book appeared?

Quentin Blake came to the book late: the 1961 first edition was drawn by the American artist Nancy Ekholm Burkert, in her very first illustration job.

In Dahl's novel, where does the Old-Green-Grasshopper tell James that a grasshopper's ears are?

On its belly, he explains, one of the surprises that lead him to tell James there are 'a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't started wondering about yet'.

Which Stinky Cheese Man illustrator drew a Giant Peach edition and was the 1996 film's conceptual designer?

Lane Smith's illustrated edition came out in 1996, the same year as the film, for which he designed the look of all six insect characters and painted twenty scenes to guide the crew.

Puffin's 2023 revision of the Giant Peach swapped Dahl's word 'queer' for which blander adjective?

Strange replaced it, and the same edit turned Aunt Sponge from 'enormously fat' into 'quite large' and James's face from 'white with horror' to 'agog with horror'.

Which country's Dahl publishers, with France and the Netherlands, refused Puffin's 2023 Giant Peach rewrites?

United States publishers kept Dahl's original text, as the edits drew fire from Salman Rushdie, Rishi Sunak and Queen Camilla among many others.

Which blockbuster director's company was among the suitors for the Giant Peach film rights before Disney won them?

Steven Spielberg's Amblin was among the interested parties after Dahl's death in 1990, but his estate liked the idea of an animated version and sold the book to Disney.

Which songwriting duo, later of Dear Evan Hansen and La La Land, wrote the Giant Peach stage musical's score?

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul got the job after writing three audition songs in a week, two of which made it into the show, and went on to a record-fast EGOT.

Before settling on a peach, Roald Dahl planned to send James across the ocean inside which giant fruit?

A cherry was the first idea, but Dahl decided a peach was prettier, bigger and squishier.

Which Tim Burton film character makes a cameo as a ship's captain in the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film?

Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, turns up as the captain in the Arctic scene. The peach film's director and producers had made his own film three years earlier.

Critics have compared James's cruel aunts, Sponge and Spiker, with which family in the Harry Potter books?

The Dursleys shut Harry in a cupboard much as the aunts work James like a servant. Dahl's nightmarish guardians set the pattern more than thirty years before Hogwarts.

On his first night inside the giant peach, James sleeps in what kind of bed, spun for him by Miss Spider?

A hammock of silky thread hangs from the ceiling for each traveller, and Miss Spider asks James how soft he would like his. He answers that he likes a very soft bed.

Roald Dahl gave James, the hero of James and the Giant Peach, the middle name Henry and which surname?

Trotter is a name James almost never hears, because his aunts refuse to use it. They call him a disgusting little beast or a miserable creature instead.

Which royal joined the 2020 charity reading of James and the Giant Peach and later criticised Puffin's 2023 rewrites?

Queen Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall, read in the lockdown series beside Meryl Streep and Benedict Cumberbatch. Three years later she was among the public figures who objected to the edits.

In Dahl's novel, the many-legged Centipede ends up a New York sales executive for a firm making what?

Boots and shoes suit a bug who wears a boot on every foot and has James unlace them all at bedtime. His grand title is Vice-President-in-Charge-of-Sales.

Which future Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts is among the bug voices in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

David Thewlis, who went on to play Professor Remus Lupin, voices the gloomiest member of the peach's crew. He joined the Harry Potter films in 2004.

In the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film, the Centipede dives into icy water to fetch what from a wreck?

A compass is his prize, because he had steered the peach off course while on watch. He is taken prisoner down there, and James and Miss Spider have to come to the rescue.

Which Lion King voice actor recorded an audiobook of James and the Giant Peach for Harper Children's Audio in 2003?

Jeremy Irons, the voice of the villainous Scar, read the story for Harper Children's Audio. Dahl himself had recorded an abridged version for Caedmon Records in 1977.

Which famous ocean liner's captain spots the flying peach through his telescope in Dahl's James and the Giant Peach?

The Queen Mary is on her way to America when her captain spots something in the sky with a small boy on it. His officers decide he has been drinking again and call the ship's doctor.

Miss Spider tells James that Aunt Sponge killed her father only last week by flushing him down what?

The bathtub drain took her father. Her grandmother stuck fast in Aunt Spiker's wet kitchen paint, was fed there for six months, then was spotted by Aunt Sponge and killed with a mop.

The old man tells James to stir the magic crystals into water along with what from his own body?

Ten of his hairs must go into the water, and James is to drink the mixture once it bubbles. He never gets the chance, because he trips by the old peach tree and the crystals burrow into the soil.

In Dahl's novel, vain Aunt Sponge recites a poem boasting that which famous place would adore her?

Hollywood would adore her, Aunt Sponge boasts, after praising her own smell and her dainty toes. Aunt Spiker spoils the verse by pointing out her sister's tummy.

After quick-drying paint hardens the Centipede into a statue in Dahl's novel, what finally sets him free?

A flood of rain crashes onto the peach when the sky's weather-makers turn on their faucets, and it washes him clean. Until then the paint had dried on his lips and he could not speak.

In Dahl's novel, Miss Spider sets up a New York factory supplying which daring performers?

Tightrope walkers buy their ropes from the factory she runs with a fellow spinner from the peach. Her thread had already hauled the whole crew out of shark-filled water.

At the end of Dahl's novel, the Ladybug settles down in New York by marrying which city official?

The fire chief, head of the city's Fire Department, becomes her husband and she lives happily ever after. Every one of the peach's bugs ends the book rich and successful.

In Dahl's novel, New York police take Miss Spider for which monster that later menaces Charlie's Great Glass Elevator?

A Vermicious Knid is the verdict of the terrified officers on the skyscraper. Dahl reused the name in 1972 for the shape-shifting aliens that invade a space hotel.

Which actor-director, who filmed Dahl's Matilda instead, was among those chasing the Giant Peach film rights in 1992?

Danny DeVito was among those interested when Dahl's estate began offering the rights. His Matilda reached cinemas in 1996, the same year as the peach film.

Karey Kirkpatrick, who wrote the 1996 James and the Giant Peach screenplay, went on to script which Aardman feature?

Chicken Run, Aardman's hen-house escape comedy, was his next animated feature. He later wrote the Broadway musical Something Rotten! with his songwriter brother Wayne.

Andy Partridge wrote four songs for the 1996 Giant Peach film before being replaced; which band did he front?

XTC's singer lost the job partly because the studio wanted to own the songs' copyright in perpetuity. His four numbers included one called Stinking Rich Song.

Which Bond director was in talks with Disney in 2016 to remake James and the Giant Peach in live action?

Sam Mendes was negotiating to direct, with novelist Nick Hornby in talks to write the script. He left the following year to discuss a live-action Pinocchio instead.

At the end of the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film, Miss Spider goes into which New York business?

A nightclub is her new venture once the bugs find fame in the city. The film also makes her the very spider James rescued from his hysterical aunts before the peach grew.

Which much-loved voice of 1970s British children's TV played the Centipede in the BBC's 1976 Giant Peach adaptation?

Bernard Cribbins, narrator of The Wombles, played the Centipede in a version shown on BBC One three days after Christmas. Anna Quayle was his Aunt Spiker.

Which author of the violent satire American Psycho names James and the Giant Peach as his favourite children's book?

Bret Easton Ellis says the book changed his life when an aunt read it aloud over a beach holiday. It showed him a world crueller and more absurd than picture books had let on.

Nancy Ekholm Burkert, first illustrator of James and the Giant Peach, later won a Caldecott Honor for which fairy tale?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, her 1972 picture book, became a Caldecott Honor Book. Dahl's peach had been her very first illustration job eleven years earlier.

Which American publisher issued the first edition of James and the Giant Peach, illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert?

Alfred A. Knopf brought the book out in America first. British readers later got a different artist, Michael Simeon, for their own first edition.

Long before James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl's first children's book was which 1943 tale drawn from RAF folklore?

The Gremlins, about little creatures pilots blamed for aircraft faults, was written for a Walt Disney film that was never made. Dahl had been an RAF pilot himself.

Schools in Wisconsin and Florida challenged James and the Giant Peach in the early 1990s for supposedly promoting what?

Tobacco and whiskey drew the complaint, along with a single mild swear word. A Virginia county pulled the book from classrooms in 1995 for encouraging children to disobey adults.

In 2012, illustrations from James and the Giant Peach and five other Dahl books appeared on a commemorative set of what?

Royal Mail stamps carried artwork from six Dahl favourites that year, the peach sharing the set with The Twits, Matilda and Fantastic Mr Fox.

In the stage musical of James and the Giant Peach, Aunts Sponge and Spiker make their living as what?

Pickpockets working the footpaths of Dover, the pair stay out of jail by making charitable donations to the police. They take James in only to use him as a slave.

Which dance troupe formed sets and shadow effects from its own bodies in the Giant Peach musical's 2010 premiere?

Pilobolus built most of the scenery from dancers' bodies and cast shadows for the special effects. The troupe was dropped when the show was reworked for Seattle in 2013.

Which Booker Prize-winning novelist was among the authors who attacked Puffin's 2023 rewrites of the Giant Peach?

Salman Rushdie called the changes absurd censorship in a tweet, while granting that Dahl was no angel. More than seventy edits had been made to the peach story alone.

As the peach drifts past the sky-dwellers' city in Dahl's novel, James sees their wives frying what on stoves?

Snowballs sizzle on the stoves while the children play nearby. The travellers also slip past the great drums used for making thunder and the machines that brew cyclones.

Which unflattering label does the boastful Centipede wear with pride in Dahl's James and the Giant Peach?

A pest is what he happily calls himself, while the crew's soil-eating gloom-monger is proud of being the gardener's friend instead. The two bicker for the whole voyage.

Once the giant peach finally stops growing, what does greedy Aunt Sponge propose doing with it first?

Dig out some to eat with a shovel is her plan, after she prods the fruit and declares it perfectly ripe. Her sister overrules her with a better idea.

The boy who played James in the 1996 Giant Peach film left acting and by 2017 was teaching which school subject?

Maths teacher and aspiring novelist is how he was described in 2017. In between came a civil engineering degree and a spell playing bass guitar in an indie band.

The Old-Green-Grasshopper tells James that long-horned grasshoppers make an inferior sound, more like which instrument?

A banjo is all the long-horned kind can manage by rubbing their wings together, he sniffs. His own short-horned kind make music with a back leg against the wing.

Which Oscar-winning Ghost screenwriter wrote a draft of the 1996 Giant Peach film that lost out to Karey Kirkpatrick's?

Bruce Joel Rubin and Kirkpatrick were each brought in to write a separate draft after the first screenwriter died. The studio went with Kirkpatrick's version.

Which cartoon voice actor, best known as Johnny Bravo, sings the Centipede's songs in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Jeff Bennett supplied the Centipede's singing voice, while a film star handled the character's spoken lines. He also voiced Dexter's Dad in Dexter's Laboratory.