When audiences meet Mr. and Mrs. Twit on Netflix this week, they won’t find the glossy, feel-good world typical of family animation. Instead, they’ll be hurled headfirst into a stylized CG adaptation of Twitlandia, a rusting, revolting amusement park filled with wall-to-wall grime, death-trap carnival rides, and the most OSHA-unfriendly work conditions imaginable.
Directed by Phil Johnston (Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia) and co-directed by Katie Shanahan and Todd Kunjan Demong, this feature update reimagines one of Roald Dahl’s strangest and shortest books as a full-blown animated adventure, one that proudly leans into the “naughty” spirit that made Dahl’s stories endure.
Phil Johnston
“The book is only about 76 pages,” Johnston tells Cartoon Brew ahead of the film’s streaming release on October 17. “It’s really a series of sketches; the Twits being horrible to each other and to animals. So for me, the fun was taking these two hateful, fantastic characters and building a world around them. It’s really more inspired by than adapted from the source material.”
Dahl’s Meanest Couple Deliver A Modern Morality Tale
In the new film, Mr. and Mrs. Twit, voiced by Margo Martindale and Johnny Vegas, are still the meanest, smelliest, nastiest couple alive who also happen to own and operate the world’s most idiotic amusement park. When they rise to power in their city, two brave orphans and a family of magical animals must outwit the vile duo to save their home. It’s classic Dahl chaos that fans of his writing will appreciate, but also, Johnston says, “a story for our times, about cruelty and empathy — and how we can fight one with the other.”
That moral edge is baked into Dahl’s DNA, but Johnston was equally drawn to the mischief. After years of writing and directing at Disney, he was eager to test limits. “I could not have made this movie in a million years at Disney,” he says. “I wanted to flex some stranger muscles, darker ambitions, a tone that’s highbrow themes and lowbrow comedy. Netflix actually let me make a strange baby, and I wake up every morning surprised they’re releasing it.”
A New Kind Of Dahl Universe
Johnston’s Twits also carries the distinction of being the first major project in Netflix’s Roald Dahl storytelling universe, following the streaming giant’s 2021 acquisition of the Dahl estate. But he downplays the “cinematic universe” idea. “I don’t think there’s going to be a Marvel-style shared world,” he says. “I love that each filmmaker can interpret Dahl differently — animated, live-action, dark, silly. Hopefully, this movie reminds people that Dahl’s tone is naughty and sharp-edged. The satire has teeth.”
The Art Of The Grotesque
That “sharp-edged” tone permeates the film’s aesthetic. Production designer Rémi Savva and the visual team faced the daunting task of creating an environment that’s “ugly, but cinematically attractive.” The solution was to lean into chaos.
“In the book, their house has no windows,” Johnston explains. “So we thought, what if their light comes from walls of stolen televisions? What if they’ve built the place from whatever they could steal, refrigerators, toilets, entire trucks of junk? That collage, that maximalist approach, became the language of the film.”
The result is a mosaic of stolen parts and a treat for detail-obsessed viewers. “If you pause in their bedroom,” Johnston grins, “there’s a bathtub with a motor, a toilet next to the bed, a dead fish, taxidermy… It’s disgusting, but also kind of beautiful. I wanted it to feel alive, like a living, moaning creature.”
The sound design backs that up, with subtle industrial groans inspired by David Lynch’s Eraserhead. “Every time you’re in the Twits’ house,” Johnston says, “you’re in a different world.”
Designing The Twits — Beautifully Repulsive
Visually, the film honors the sketchy, anarchic energy of Quentin Blake’s original illustrations, while allowing Johnston and his team to add layers of depth and character. “Quentin’s linework, that beauty in roughness, was essential,” he says. “We wanted the Twits to be repulsive but also appealing. Beautiful and hideous at the same time.”
Mrs. Twit, for example, is no longer just a hag. Johnston imagined her as a frustrated performer, “a diva or rock star who never made it.” Her design forms an upright triangle, while Mr. Twit’s is the inverse, all beard, belly, and shoulders on top of spindly legs. “The shapes themselves tell you who they are,” Johnston notes. “He sprawls out, unconcerned. She’s sharp and ambitious. The animators nailed that balance between grotesque and gorgeous.”
Color-wise, the world is rich with browns and mustards, what Johnston jokingly calls “chicken-grease chic.” The texture choices were just as deliberate. “When surfaces got too shiny or slippery, it crossed into unappealing territory — and not in the good way,” he says. “We had to find that line where something could be gross but still beautiful.”
Found Family In A Mean World
For all its visual filth, The Twits also embraces a warmth that most family-friendly fare requires, especially in its depiction of the orphanage that shelters the film’s young heroes, voiced by Natalie Portman, Emilia Clarke, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and Ryan Lopez. “Dahl’s world is mean, and kids are small in it,” Johnston says. “But they find family, people who choose to love them. That theme of found family was really important.”
In contrast to the Twits’ murky lair, the orphanage scenes are painted in gentle pastels, offering “a sanctuary in a world that’s cruel.” The director smiles: “It’s literally under a train track, on the wrong side of town, but there’s beauty there. Warmth matters.”
Three Directors, One Vision
The film’s three credited directors — Johnston, Shanahan, and Demong — all emerged from the story department, a background that shaped their collaboration. “They’re brilliant story artists,” Johnston says. “Todd’s great with action and physical comedy; Katie’s brilliant with emotion. We were totally in sync.”
That synergy was crucial when production, originally developed as a limited series, shifted into a feature after one of Netflix’s multiple animation slate restructures. “We were canceled as a show, then revived as a movie,” Johnston recalls. “We had a headline pinned to our wall that said ‘Twits Not Dead Yet.’ That became our rally cry.”
Working across five continents, the global crew finished the film in about two years, an impressive pace for a CG feature not made by one of the Hollywood majors. “It was like jumping out of a plane and building the parachute on the way down,” Johnston jokes. “But the right collaborators make it possible.”
Made For Streaming But Fit For The Big Screen
While The Twits is designed for Netflix, Johnston doesn’t consider it a “small-screen” film. “I wish everyone could see it on a huge screen,” he says. “It’s packed with detail. But the heart of it – that mix of comedy, horror, and empathy — should come through anywhere.”
With its mix of slapstick and social satire, grotesque visuals and emotional warmth, The Twits might be Netflix’s strangest animated gamble yet. “I love that Dahl’s stories were never safe,” he says. “They were naughty, weird, and real. This movie just leans into that.”
As Johnston puts it: “It’s a strange baby. But it’s ours.”