Inside Netflix’s “The Twits”: Writer/Director Phil Johnston on Empathy, Evil, and Adapting Roald Dahl

Writer/director Phil Johnston, known for his work on Zootopia and the Wreck-It Ralph features, says. “Every character I’ve ever truly connected to has been on the outside looking in. Outcasts, dirtbags, and weirdos are my people.” It seems appropriate, then, that he brought beloved weirdo-specialist Roald Dahl’s book “The Twits” to the big screen. He took Dahl’s story of two hateful people, expanded it, and turned it into a social satire wrapped in an animated comedy that is equally creepy and comforting,...