Movies like die unendliche geschichte

The NeverEnding Story (German: Die Unendliche Geschichte) is a 1984 fantasy film co-written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen (in his first English-language film), and based on the 1979 novel The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. The film was produced by Bernd Eichinger and Dieter Giessler. It stars Noah Hathaway, Barret Oliver, Tami Stronach, Patricia Hayes, Sydney Bromley, Gerald McRaney, Moses Gunn, and Alan Oppenheimer as the voices of both Falkor and Gmork (as well as other characters). The film follows a boy who happens upon a magical book that tells of a young warrior who is given the task of stopping the Nothing, a dark force, from engulfing the wonderland world of Fantasia.

At the time of its release, it was the most expensive film produced outside the United States or the Soviet Union. The film was the first in The NeverEnding Story film series. The film adapts only the first half of the book, and consequently does not convey the message of the title as it was portrayed in the novel. The second half of the book was subsequently used as a rough basis for the second film, The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990). The third film, The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia (1994), has an original plot not based on the book.