50 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.

What does the old man give James in the 1996 film, able to grow anything to colossal size?

Crocodile tongues, glowing and wormlike, leap from James's spilled bag into the soil under a barren tree, and the giant peach swells out of it overnight.

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 and a spaceship the second, so police and firemen are already waiting when the peach comes down on the city.

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 all the way to New York, arriving with fire axes at the landing until Miss Spider wraps them in silk; the book simply flattens them under the rolling fruit.

Which composer's five songs for the 1996 James and the Giant Peach film earned its only Oscar nomination?

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

As James enters the fruit, the 1996 Giant Peach film turns from grey to colour in a nod to which 1939 film?

The Wizard of Oz made the same switch when Dorothy reached Oz, and the Peach film's greys and greens give way to vivid colour once the stop-motion voyage begins.

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

A single comma was Dahl's stated limit, yet the revised James and the Giant Peach carried more than seventy changes, including a brand-new poem written for Aunt Sponge.

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 in the 1996 Giant Peach film, then quit acting and became a civil engineer?

Paul Terry was picked from hundreds of children, went on to the sitcom Microsoap, and then left the business for an engineering career that included BAE Systems.

Once James's peach grows to the size of 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, where James sleeps on bare floorboards, does all the aunts' chores 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 is among the wreckage the peach leaves behind before it splashes into the sea and is ringed by ravenous sharks.

How many seagulls does James harness to lift the giant peach out of the shark-filled sea in Dahl's novel?

501 seagulls, each tied by a silk thread to the peach, haul the fruit clear of the sharks and carry it high over the Atlantic.

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.

After three years of misery with his aunts, how old is James when the old man hands him the magic?

Seven is the age Dahl gives his hero; James was four when an escaped zoo animal ate his parents on a London shopping trip.

After New York's children eat the giant peach, where do James and the bugs make a home inside its stone?

Central Park is where the peach stone ends up as a house, with James and the bugs each taking a New York job and the city's children as their new friends.

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 opening live-action stretch; the film switches to stop-motion once James crawls inside the peach.

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 appears as the Magic Man in the live-action opening, then his voice carries the whole story as narrator over the stop-motion voyage.

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 actress, fresh from her Dead Man Walking Oscar, voices Miss Spider in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Susan Sarandon voices the spider James had rescued from his aunts, and at the film's end Miss Spider opens a New York 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 actress, Daphne Moon in Frasier, voices the motherly Mrs Ladybug in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

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

Which Johnny Bravo voice actor sings the Centipede's songs in the 1996 Giant Peach film?

Jeff Bennett takes over from the speaking actor whenever the Centipede sings, fronting 'That's the Life' and 'Eating the Peach' on the soundtrack.

The 1996 Giant Peach film is set in the summer of which year, with James already in his aunts' care?

1948 is the film's setting, placing James's postwar English childhood thirteen years before Dahl's novel appeared.

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

Skeletal pirates lurk in the Arctic Ocean, one of the film's invented detours, alongside the giant mechanical shark that hunts the peach at sea.

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 Centipede's ambition in the epilogue, while the rest of the crew take jobs around the city and James celebrates his ninth birthday with them.

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: the cultured old insect, the eldest of James's crew, finishes the film as a concert violinist in New York.

The Giant Peach stage musical premiered in 2010 at Goodspeed Musicals, a company based in which US state?

Connecticut's Goodspeed, birthplace of Annie, staged it in the town of Chester with an eye on Broadway, but mixed notices sent the show back for rewrites instead.

Which composer's score for Emma beat the 1996 Giant Peach film to the musical-or-comedy score Oscar?

Rachel Portman's Emma won in the second year of the Academy's short-lived split between dramatic and musical-or-comedy scores, making her the first female composer to take a scoring Oscar.

Which singer was the Giant Peach film's first choice for its songs, before Disney's music division balked?

Elvis Costello was interested, but Disney's music people said 'their alarms just went off' at the idea and pushed a safer composer on the film instead.

Andy Partridge of which band wrote four songs for the 1996 Giant Peach film that were all dropped?

XTC's frontman delivered 'All I Dream Of Is a Friend', 'Don't Let Us Bug Ya', 'Stinking Rich Song' and 'Everything Will Be All Right', one of them 'very beautiful' in the director's words, before the studio changed course.

Which Singing Detective writer drafted an early Giant Peach screenplay that was set aside after his death?

Dennis Potter's draft was called 'slightly black and bizarre', with the sharks as Nazis, and Disney balked; Karey Kirkpatrick's later script is the one that was filmed.

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

Toy Story won the pitch, and Ranft had been pushing the book at Disney since the early 1980s, when the animators judged it too weird and too costly to make.

Which thriller, Edward Norton's debut, beat the Giant Peach film to number one on its opening weekend?

Primal Fear held number one for three weeks, and the peach, which opened with about $7.5 million, never earned back its $38 million budget in cinemas.

The 1996 Giant Peach film won Best Animated Feature at which festival, founded in 1960 in France?

Annecy, the festival devoted entirely to animation, handed the peach its Best Animated Feature prize, a warmer verdict than the lone nomination it got from the Oscars.

Roughly how many minutes of live action open the 1996 Giant Peach film before James crawls into the fruit?

20 minutes of live action give way to stop-motion inside the peach, and the film returns to live action for New York while the bugs stay puppets.

Dahl refused every film offer for the Giant Peach in his lifetime; who finally approved the 1996 version?

His widow Felicity opened up the rights in 1992 and later said Roald 'would have been delighted with what they did with James'.

Which future Caldecott Honor winner for Snow White illustrated the Knopf first edition of the Giant Peach?

Nancy Ekholm Burkert's very first illustration job was the peach, a decade before her Snow White picture book became a New York Times Notable Book.

Which artist illustrated the first British edition of James and the Giant Peach, rather than the American one?

Michael Simeon drew the British debut; the 50th-anniversary Penguin Classics edition of 2011 paired Jordan Crane's new art with the original American pictures.

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

Lane Smith's paperback edition came out in 1996, the same year as the film he helped design, and he went on to win the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2017.

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

Strange replaced it, alongside the deletion of every reference to Aunt Sponge being fat and of skin-colour lines such as 'his face white 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 Wombles narrator played the Centipede in the BBC's 1976 TV version of the Giant Peach?

Bernard Cribbins, who read more Jackanory episodes than anyone, took the Centipede in a version broadcast on BBC One on 28 December 1976, twenty years before the film.

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.