Timothee Chalamet Reveals First Photo Of His Willy Wonka
Just 11 days ago, Warner Bros. announced the start of production on Wonka, a prequel about the life of the young Willy Wonka, one of fiction’s great enthusiasts about candy and torturing small children for kicks. Timothée Chalamet plays the young Wonka.
Less than two weeks later, we’ve already got our first photo of Chalamet as Wonka. Chalamet himself posted it on his official Twitter account. Check it out:
The Wonka cast also includes Rowan Atkinson, Mathew Baynton, Jim Carter, Olivia Colman, Sally Hawkins, and Keegan-Michael Key. The film is directed by Paul King, who made both of the extremely charming live-action Paddincton films. (King co-wrote the Wonka screenplay with Simon Farnaby.)
This is the third film about the life of Willy Wonka, the character originally created by author Roald Dahl in 1964’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In 1971, Gene Wilder played Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In 2005, Tim Burton made his own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp in the lead role. Chalamet’s version, at least in this one picture, looks closer to Wilder’s Wonka than Depp’s. Songs for the film are being written by The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon.
While Wonka is a prequel, Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory offered its own origin story for the character. (It involved his father, who was a dentist, played by Christopher Lee.) So this movie will presumably offer a different version of that story. No word on whether the Oompa Loompas are involved yet. Wonka is scheduled to open in theaters on March 17, 2023.