Adaptations of Moby-Dick

Film

• A 1926 silent film entitled The Sea Beast, starring John Barrymore as a heroic Ahab with a fiancée and an evil brother, loosely based on the novel. Remade as Moby Dick in 1930, a version in which Ahab kills the whale and returns home to the woman he loves.
• Moby Dick, a 1956 film directed by John Huston and starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, with screenplay by Ray Bradbury.
• The 1961 Akutagawa Prize winning Japanese novel The Whale God, which was later made into a tokusatsu film by Daiei Film, featured battles between an unusually large and powerful North Pacific right whale and whalers who seeks revenge on the whale. Its plot was presumably inspired by Moby-Dick.
• Moby Dick, an unfinished 1971 film featuring readings from the book by Orson Welles. The footage was unedited in Welles' lifetime, but was posthumously compiled in 1999 by the Munich Film Museum.
• Moby Dick, featuring Jack Aranson as Captain Ahab, was filmed in 1978 and released in November 2005 on DVD. The director was Paul Stanley.
• The 1984 animated film Samson & Sally: Song of the Whales involves a young white whale named Samson who searches for Moby-Dick after hearing a legend that Moby-Dick would one day return to save all the whales. The sinking of the Pequod is shown as the young whale's mother tells him the story of Moby Dick. The film was alternately titled The Secret of Moby Dick in some other countries.
• The 1986 animated film Dot and the Whale involves the character Dot embarking on a search for Moby-Dick in hope of helping a beached whale.
• The 1994 live-action/animated hybrid fantasy film The Pagemaster features a scene with Moby Dick and Captain Ahab, who was voiced by George Hearn.
• The 1996 Canadian animated short film The Adventures of Moby Dick, has a young Moby Dick lose his mother off the coast of Massachusetts in 1841, before being befriended by Ishmael, an orphan boy working on the Pequod with Captain Ahab.
• In 1999, a 25-minute paint-on-glass-animated adaptation was made by the Russian studio Man and Time, directed by Natalya Orlova from a screenplay by Brian Sibley. Rod Steiger was the voice of Captain Ahab. The film came in third place at the 5th Open Russian Festival of Animated Film. It was later released on DVD as part of the "World Literary Classics" series.
• Capitaine Achab, a 2007 French film directed by Philippe Ramos, with Valérie Crunchant and Frédéric Bonpart. The film focuses on Ahab's early life, leading up to his encounter with Moby Dick.
• Moby Dick, a 2010 film starring Barry Bostwick as Ahab and made by The Asylum, released on DVD as 2010: Moby Dick.
• The 2011 film Age of the Dragons, directed by Ryan Little, features Danny Glover as a mountain-roaming Ahab maimed by fire instead of a peg-leg, in which the great white whale is a white dragon.
• The 2015 film In the Heart of the Sea, directed by Ron Howard, about the sinking of the American whaling ship Essex in 1820, an event that inspired Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick.
• The 2018 sci-fi film Beyond White Space, directed by Ken Locsmandi, make strong references to the novel, characters mentioned and real people involved with the book and the process of publishing.

  Television

• In 1954, Albert McCleery made a television film entitled Moby Dick for the Hallmark Hall of Fame anthology series, starring Victor Jory as Captain Ahab, Lamont Johnson as Ishmael, Harvey Stephens as Stubb and Hugh O'Brian as Starbuck.
• "Dopey Dick the Pink Whale", a 1957 episode of Woody Woodpecker, was directed by Paul J. Smith. Woody is shanghaied onto the Peapod by Dapper Denver Dooley to go after the pink whale Dopey Dick that bit him in the rear, and Woody conspires with the whale against the cowardly captain.
• In 1961, Rocky and His Friends featured the Wailing Whale story arc in which Rocky and Bullwinkle go in search of Maybe Dick, the Wailing Whale.
• "Dicky Moe", a 1962 episode of Tom and Jerry directed by Gene Deitch, has Tom shanghaied by the Ahab-like captain of the Komquot, whose crew has all deserted and who soon puts him to work scrubbing the deck. When Dicky Moe is finally sighted, the line from a fired harpoon which Tom is holding onto causes him to be lashed to the whale's side Ahab-fashion.
• A 1964 episode of The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo saw Ishmael Quincy Magoo as a member of Captain Ahab's crew hunting the great white whale.
• A 1964 episode of The Flintstones called "Adobe Dick" saw Fred Flintstone and the gang encounter the great "whaleasaurus" during a Lodge fishing trip. This episode also mixed in aspects of Mutiny on the Bounty by sailing on HMS Bountystone commanded by "Captain Blah".
• A 1964 episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea called "The Ghost of Moby Dick" stars Edward Binns as a crippled insane marine biologist named Walter Bryce who is obsessed with finding the great White Whale that killed his son.
• In 1967, the Hanna-Barbera series Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor featured the whale in adventures with two boys he had rescued.
• A 1991 episode of the cartoon series Beetlejuice titled "Moby Richard" had Beetlejuice and Lydia putting on "Disasterpiece Theatre" and deciding to do Moby Dick as their first episode. But Moby "Richard" refuses to change the classic to suit Beetlejuice's notions of what a classic should be and quits – but not without insulting BJ first. BJ lets the character of Captain Ahab take him over, and leads the others on a dangerous mission through Sandworm Land to get revenge on the whale.
• The September 22, 1993 episode of The New Pink Panther Show aired a segment entitled "Moby Pink", in which the Pink Panther, after being unable to board a cruise ship for his vacation, winds up on a broken-down fishing scow, captained by an obsessed old peg-legged sailor searching for the "great off-white whale" known as "Skippy".
• The October 26, 1993 episode of Animaniacs aired a segment entitled "Moby or Not Moby", in which the Warner siblings try to protect Moby Dick from the wrath of Captain Ahab. The Warners and Ahab perform a parody of the sea shanty "The Drunken Sailor" entitled "Captain Ahab, You're a Dummy".
• In a 1996 episode of The X-Files titled "Quagmire", FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate a mythical lake monster named Big Blue, which resembles Loch Ness. The episode is a loose retelling of Moby-Dick. Big Blue is a representation of the paranormal and of Moby Dick, the infamous sperm whale. Mulder, who plays the part of Captain Ahab, is obsessed with finding Big Blue. Scully calls herself Starbuck. Throughout the episode, Scully's dog, named Queequeg, is Scully's companion. The dog Queequeg plays the part of the harpooner by following its nose towards the lake and ultimately towards Big Blue. Mulder and Scully venture out onto the lake in a boat in search of Big Blue. The boat is struck by an unidentified object and sinks, leaving Mulder and Scully seemingly stranded on a rock. Mulder's quest for Big Blue nearly kills the entire crew of the boat.
• A Japanese animated adaptation called Hakugei: Legend of the Moby Dick was produced in 1997. The anime is a sci-fi retelling of the book, with Moby Dick being a whale-shaped sentient spaceship with the power to destroy planets.
• Moby Dick, a 1998 television mini-series starring Patrick Stewart as Ahab. Gregory Peck won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Father Mapple.
• Moby Dick et le Secret de Mu, a 2005 Luxembourgian/French animated series produced by Benoît Petit.
• Moby Dick, a 2011 television mini-series directed by Mike Barker, starring William Hurt as Ahab, Donald Sutherland as Father Mapple, and Ethan Hawke as Starbuck.
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Belly of the Beast", the boys create a giant mechanical shark for the annual Danville Harbor celebrations. Candace and her friend Stacy join a peg-legged Ahab-like captain aboard his ship The Pea-quad in chasing the giant shark, hurling harpoons made of toilet plungers. When the captain is supposedly devoured by the shark, Candace assumes command and an Ahab-like personality, even paraphrasing Ahab's curse: "From Danville Harbor I stab at thee; for bustings' sake I spit my last spit at thee!". The rope attached to one of the plunger harpoons fired from the cannon gets looped around her ankle and she becomes lashed to the shark's side in Ahab-fashion.
• "Möbius Dick" is a sixth-season episode of the series Futurama that first aired on August 4, 2011. Leela becomes obsessed with hunting a four-dimensional space whale.
• "Ramlak Rising" is a first-season episode of the 2011 ThunderCats series that first aired on August 5, 2011. The captain of a ship obsessively hunts a creature called a Ramlak.
• The 2013 television film The Whale, written by Terry Cafolla.
• "Dopey Dick" is a thirteenth-season episode of the series SpongeBob SquarePants that first aired on June 29, 2023. Squidward acts as Fishmael, and he and the captain's crew of sailors join the hunt for a great white jellyfish named Dopey Dick.

  Video Games

• The 2015 video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, directed by Hideo Kojima and published by Konami, makes extensive references to Moby-Dick and its characters. Early in the game, a character introduces himself by quoting the novel's opening line, "Who am I? You can call me Ishmael." before giving the player character the name "Ahab." After escaping from invading forces, the player character sees a huge flaming whale. Later in the game, a pilot named Pequod is assigned to the player's helicopter. In addition, the character Kazuhira Miller loses several limbs and is driven by revenge for the remainder of the plot, similar to Ahab in the novel.
• The 2023 video game Limbus Company has a character named Ishmael, whose backstory and "Canto" directly reference Moby-Dick. The Pequod is a faction in the game, while the whale, Captain Ahab, and Queequeg are characters.