The upcoming Wonka explores the earlier years of author Roald Dahl’s iconic chocolatier Willy Wonka, but it doesn’t completely connect to the events of the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory story, with star Timothée Chalamet confirming his interest in potentially returning to reprise the role for another installment. Understandably, Chalamet notes that a return would be contingent on the story being told, but with Wonka being a much more eccentric character who might have some nefarious intentions in the original story, there’s a lot of room left to see the figure’s descent into mania. Wonka lands in theaters on December 15th.
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“If there was a story to be told,” Chalamet shared with Entertainment Tonight on the possibility of returning for a sequel. “And evidently there is.”
He continued, “Something twisted happens … I don’t know how we started like this and end there — I don’t know what the story is.”
With the film taking place 25 years before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there’s a lot of room to explore the character, though writer/director Paul King confirmed it wasn’t his intent to merely tease the beginning of Wonka’s journey, even if he also isn’t ruling out a sequel.
“We wanted to make a movie with a beginning, middle and end that wouldn’t feel like one of those things where you kinda go, ‘Oh, I only just saw a quarter of the story.’ The movie is its own thing,” King confirmed to the outlet. “It’s set 25 years before the factory — but, like you said, there’s 25 years and plenty more things that happen to Willy Wonka.”
From Paul King, writer/director of the Paddington films, David Heyman, producer of Harry Potter, Gravity, Fantastic Beasts, and Paddington, and producers Alexandra Derbyshire (the Paddington films, Jurassic World Dominion), and Luke Kelly (Roald Dahl’s The Witches), comes an intoxicating mix of magic and music, mayhem and emotion, all told with fabulous heart and humor. Starring Timothée Chalamet in the title role, this irresistibly vivid and inventive big-screen spectacle will introduce audiences to a young Willy Wonka, chock-full of ideas and determined to change the world one delectable bite at a time-proving that the best things in life begin with a dream, and if you’re lucky enough to meet Willy Wonka, anything is possible.
Wonka also stars Olivia Colman (The Favourite, The Crown), Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean, Love, Actually), Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), Keegan Michael Key (The Prom, Schmigadoon!), Mathew Baynton (Ghosts), Jim Carter (Downton Abbey), Rich Fulcher (Marriage Story), Paterson Joseph (Noughts + Crosses), Calah Lane (The Day Shall Come), Colin O’Brien (The Mothership), Natasha Rothwell (White Lotus), Rakhee Thakrar (Sex Education), and Ellie White (The Other One).
Wonka lands in theaters on December 15th.
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