Wonka Achieves Major Box Office Milestone

Warner Bros. has a rich chocolate hit in Wonka. The Paul King confection starring Timothée Chalamet as young chocolatier Willy Wonka crossed $500 million at the global box office since opening in theaters on December 15. Now in its fifth week, Wonka added another $8.3 million to take third place behind new releases Mean Girls (which fetched $28 million) and buzzy Jason Statham-starrer The Beekeeper ($16.7 million), making a domestic total of $176.1 million. Worldwide, Wonka has amassed $505.3 million to become the highest-grossing adaptation of author Roald Dahl’s iconic character. 

Dahl’s 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was first adapted for the screen in 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder as the world’s greatest inventor, magician, and chocolate-maker; now a classic, the original movie earned $4 million worldwide. The 2005 re-imagining Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Wonka, opened to a sweet $56 million and went on to gross $475 million worldwide.

“It is incredibly validating to see this film achieve such an excitingmilestone,” Mike De Luca and Pamela Abdy, Co-Chairs and CEOs of Warner Bros. Motion Pictures Group, said. “We are grateful to our partnersin exhibition for their unwavering support and the audiences around theglobe who came out for this big-screen celebration.”

Wonka was well-received by critics and audiences alike, receiving an 87% “certified fresh” approval from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 91% from verified moviegoers. Chalamet leads a cast that includes Calah Lane (The Day Shall Come), Keegan-Michael Key (Schmigadoon!), Paterson Joseph (Noughts + Crosses), Matt Lucas (Paddington), Mathew Baynton (Ghosts), Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean), Jim Carter (Downton Abbey), Olivia Colman (The Crown), and Hugh Grant (Paddington 2). 

The studio has yet to announce Wonka 2, but King has suggested that a potential Wonka sequel would adapt material from Dahl’s 1972 novel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,

“Dahl was definitely interested in taking Willy Wonka on. There’sdrafts that didn’t really go anywhere, and there’s a short story. Hedidn’t really write sequels, but this was the one book where he clearlyfelt there was more in the tank there. There’s an awful lot more Wonkastory that we have that we would like to tell,” King told Total Film Magazine. “It’s not like Dune: Part One where you go, ‘This is what’s happening in Part Two.’Hopefully [Wonka] works exquisitely as a stand-alone movie. But I woulddefinitely like to do more. And I’d like to spend more time in thisworld, and meet some more Oompa Loompas.”