The Twits

The Twits 2025: Behind the Wormy Spaghetti – All the Real-World Drama, Backlash & Bizarre Hollywood Twists

Netflix’s Roald Dahl toon was messy on-screen – but the off-screen story is even stickier.

Scandals & Controversies

The “Americanised Roald Dahl” Uproar

• When trailers dropped and fans realized The Twits had been shipped off to a Texan town called Triperot – complete with U.S. election-style plotlines and culture-war satire – British Dahl loyalists absolutely lost it.
• A viral Daily Mail UK TikTok post showed clips from the film while viewers raged that Netflix had “lost its British charm” and turned a grotesque British fairy-tale into a loud American political cartoon . One commenter fumed, “Wasn’t The Twits about monkeys and birds gluing them upside down? What is this?” .
• The Times leaned into the discourse with a pointed feature asking “what has Netflix done to Roald Dahl’s classic?”, describing the movie as having “a distinctly American flavour, celebrity voices and a David Byrne soundtrack” . The subtext: this isn’t your grandma’s book anymore.

The Ending Change Fans Called “Character Assassination” (Of Roald Dahl)

• In the book, the Twits suffer a famously nasty fate: they shrink, stick to the floor and die. Dahl literally ends with a gleeful “hooray.”
• In the film? Director Phil Johnston admitted to IndieWire that he rewrote the entire moral of the story, refusing to let the kids leave the Twits to die. Instead, orphan Beesha has a crisis of conscience, frees them, and the story pivots to a “message about empathy” and not becoming as cruel as your oppressors .
• On Reddit’s official discussion thread, viewers tore into the change, calling the movie “disjointed,” “unfocused,” and accusing it of sanding off Dahl’s trademark viciousness in favor of a safe, feel-good lesson .
• Johnston defended the choice, telling IndieWire he didn’t want a kids’ movie that ends with gleeful death but rather with hope and a community rebuilding Triperot ^[4]. Fans…were not soothed.

Rotten Tomatoes Shame: Second-Worst Dahl Adaptation

• The Twits slithered onto Rotten Tomatoes with a limp 50% score based on early reviews, Screen Rant noted – making it the second-lowest-rated Roald Dahl movie ever, only barely “beating” the original The Witches (49%) .
• Coverage stressed how far it lagged behind more beloved Dahl fare like Fantastic Mr. Fox and Matilda, underlining just how divisive Netflix’s reimagining really was ^[6].

Animation Industry Carnage: The Studio That Died for The Twits

Jellyfish Pictures’ Collapse – The Twits as a Final Credit Roll

• The real horror story: British animation studio Jellyfish Pictures, which animated The Twits for Netflix, shut down globally in early 2025 – right after finishing the movie.
• Cartoon Brew reported that Jellyfish, a major UK animation/VFX house whose recent work included DreamWorks’ Dog Man and Netflix features, halted all operations and put administrators in place to liquidate assets, with 69 remaining workers laid off and only a handful kept temporarily to wind things down .
• Trade reports noted Jellyfish had been battling “long-tail” Covid fallout, soaring costs, and the impact of the Hollywood strikes when it shuttered ^[7]. Kidscreen and Animation Magazine similarly described the shutdown as part of a wider VFX/animation crisis .
• Industry gossip on Reddit (not officially confirmed, but widely discussed) painted a picture of exhausted artists racing to finish The Twits and Dog Man while management scrambled for a buyer – only to be told the studio was done once the big jobs wrapped .
• A UK animation Facebook group even shared the Twits trailer “in memoriam” to Jellyfish, pointedly calling it “the trailer of their last work” . Ouch.

Backlash, Thinkpieces & “Betrayed by Netflix” Discourse

Dahl Purists vs. Netflix “Custodianship”

• As reviews rolled in, the thinkpieces sharpened their knives. Yahoo reprinted a Telegraph column titled “By twisting The Twits, Netflix has betrayed Roald Dahl,” blasting the film as a “staggering failure of custodianship” that radically rewrites tone, setting and ending .
• The Guardian’s review slammed the adaptation for mangling and sentimentalising Dahl’s black comedy and called it “gruesome in all the wrong ways” – fueling the online rage that this was “not Dahl, just IP cosplay” .
• On TikTok, clips from the film were overlaid with captions like “Roald Dahl fans have slammed Netflix’s new animated adaptation” while commenters argued over whether it was “woke trash” or just a messy, over-Americanised children’s movie ^[1].

Is It… a Political Movie? Fans Say Yes

• Loading Instagram post…

  https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQLh32tCgn3/

  https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQLh32tCgn3/

• One Instagram reel from an animation creative on the film flat-out calls The Twits “a political movie,” pointing out that the Twits weaponise a meat flood disaster and a grotesque theme park to launch a populist mayoral campaign ^[13].
• The video frames the plot as satire of modern authoritarian politicians and scapegoating, sparking comment wars over whether Netflix had smuggled in a “kids’ guide to demagogues” ^[13].
• Director Phil Johnston lent fuel to the fire in interviews, saying he wanted to talk about “how people can get lured in by mean and cruel behavior” and how “the idiots have taken over the system” ^[4]. Critics nodded. Dahl stans seethed.

Cast Feuds & Tea (Or Lack Thereof… Plus Fan-Imagined Shade)

Portman & Clarke: The Non-Feud Feud

• Hard evidence of any real cast feuds? Practically nonexistent.
• Natalie Portman gave squeaky-clean press, telling Irish and UK outlets she was “so excited” to finally be in an animated film her kids could enjoy, warmly praising the story and its themes .

• Loading Instagram post…

  https://www.instagram.com/p/DNNpg7RoSWa/

  https://www.instagram.com/p/DNNpg7RoSWa/

• Emilia Clarke, meanwhile, leaned into chaos on Instagram, posting that she was “trading dragons for pure Roald Dahl chaos” as the voice of Pippa ^[16].
• Unconfirmed fan speculation: Because Portman and Clarke mostly promoted the film separately – with no big joint fluff interviews or cutesy photo ops – some fans on social media invented narrative out of thin air, reading Clarke’s “chaos” branding as subtle shade at Portman’s prestige image. There is no reporting to back this up; it’s pure shipper-brain tea, but it’s out there.

Margo Martindale & Maitreyi Ramakrishnan: The Good-Vibes Tour

• In contrast, Margo Martindale (Credenza Twit) and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (Beesha) did a charming mini-press run, gushing to outlets like ComingSoon about how wild, exhausting and fun the voice sessions were .
• Martindale later described the work as “wildly fun, but tiring,” admitting she recorded for hours to nail Credenza’s rasping nastiness . Not exactly scandal – more “national treasure does unhinged cackle for a paycheck.”

Leaks, Rumors & Wild Theories

“This Was Leaked BEFORE Release” – Netflix Leak Culture

• On r/LeaksAndRumors, one poster claimed that unfinished material from The Twits and another Netflix animation, In Your Dreams, had leaked internally, leading fans to hunt for early clips and story summaries long before marketing kicked into gear .
• The thread didn’t provide hard files, but it snowballed into speculation that Netflix Animation’s security was “sloppy” and workers were sharing work-in-progress shots. No mainstream outlet ever confirmed this – so file it under unverified rumor, but indicative of the fandom’s appetite for early dirt.

The “Sid From Toy Story” Cameo Conspiracy

• A Netflix Family TikTok compilation of Twits moments casually mentioned that one background appearance had “sparked tons of fan theories – is it actually Sid?!” .
• Fans seized on a grubby, chaos-loving side character as a grown-up Sid analogue – even though Toy Story is, obviously, Disney/Pixar turf. Netflix didn’t confirm anything, but by acknowledging the theory in promo copy, they basically poured gasoline on it ^[20].

“The Twits Is a Political Allegory” Hill People Will Die On

• That same Instagram reel from a story artist bluntly argues the film’s opening disasters, hot dog–meat flood and mayoral campaign form a pointed allegory about political manipulation and fear-mongering ^[13].
• On TikTok and Reddit, viewers stitched the clips to insist this is a “kids’ primer on fascism” hidden under bird poop and fart jokes. Johnston’s own comments about empathy vs. cruelty ensured the “this is about real politics” reading will never go away ^[4][14].

Music, Hype & the One Thing Everyone Loved

David Byrne x Hayley Williams: The Unexpected Win

• In a rare bit of near-universal positivity, the movie’s soundtrack got actual buzz. Variety revealed that Talking Heads icon David Byrne teamed up with Paramore’s Hayley Williams for “Open the Door,” the end-credits song to The Twits .
• Byrne also wrote three other original songs for the film, performed by the cast, with alt-radio and music blogs framing it as a weird-but-perfect pairing for a darkly comic cartoon ^[21].
• The track debuted ahead of release and, unlike the film’s story choices, wasn’t roasted – even TikTok edits used “Open the Door” over fanart and meme clips as the movie hit Netflix.

**The AI Actress That Wasn’t in The Twits – But Still Caused Panic**

Tilly Norwood, SAG-AFTRA’s Most-Hated “Actor,” Crash-Intersects the Hype Cycle

• In 2025–26, Hollywood got obsessed with Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated “actress” condemned by SAG-AFTRA as “not an actor, but a character generated by a computer program trained on the work of countless” real performers .
• When news broke that controversial AI studio Particle6 was developing a feature film starring Tilly called Misaligned, Variety and the LA Times ran alarmed coverage .
• Because this announcement arrived in the same general window that The Twits and other Netflix toons were being marketed, rumor-prone corners of fandom briefly panicked that Norwood might be voicing a character in The Twits too.
• Variety’s clarification that Tilly’s actual movie debut was Misaligned, not a Netflix project, debunked that – but the confusion fed a mini-wave of “boycott AI actors in kids’ films” sentiment that some viewers wrongly directed at The Twits ^[23]. No reputable source has ever linked Tilly Norwood to this film specifically.

Bottom Line: A Messy, Political, Industry-Crisis Cartoon With Surprisingly Little Personal Scandal

If you came looking for tales of Natalie Portman storming out of a booth or Emilia Clarke feuding over line readings, The Twits isn’t that movie. The gossip here isn’t about diva behavior – it’s about:

• A beloved book brutally reworked into a Texan, political, empathy-preaching musical that split critics and infuriated Dahl purists.
• An animation studio collapsing after finishing the film, turning Jellyfish Pictures’ last major job into a grim industry symbol.
• A controversial ending rewrite that swapped gleeful villain death for mercy and optimism, and lit up Reddit.
• A swirl of fan theories, leak rumors, and AI freak-outs that show just how paranoid and plugged-in animation fandom has become.

In the end, Netflix’s The Twits might be the rare family movie where the real drama lives not in the recording booth, but in thinkpieces, trade obits and the crumbling infrastructure of the animation industry itself. Call it fitting: a story about grotesque grifters ruling a town accidentally became the poster child for a chaotic, overworked corner of Hollywood trying not to shrink and disappear.