*A New trailer has dropped for director Paul King’s prequel musical “Wonka,” starring Timothée Chalamet as a young Willy Wonka and how he came to meet the Oompa-Loompas, according to IMDb.
King recently told Rolling Stone that he became a Chalamet “stan” after watching his high school musical performances on YouTube, so he didn’t make the actor audition for the Wonka role.
“It was a straight offer because he’s great and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” said King (“Paddington”). “But because he’s Timothée Chalamet and his life is so absurd, his high school musical performances are on YouTube and have hundreds of thousands of views. So I knew from stanning for Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well.”
King continued, “I knew that was in his arsenal, but I didn’t know how good he was. When I spoke to him he was quite keen. He’d done tap dancing in high school and he was like, ‘I’d quite like to show people I can do that.’”
King compared the “Wonka” musical to “the golden age of MGM musicals.”
“Certainly, I tried to have darker characters than [what] you would find in a ‘Paddington’ movie, for example,” King told Rolling Stone. “It’s a crueler world and it’s a meaner world that Willy Wonka finds himself in because that’s the sort of city that Charlie grows up in. Unlike the ‘Paddington’ world, not everyone is nice in a Roald Dahl world. I definitely got to play with those grotesque ideas, but I hope not to damage a generation of children.”
The beloved Willy Wonka character was originally played by Gene Wilder in “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” (1971) and Johnny Deep played Wonka in Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (2005). Along with Chalamet and Hugh Grant as an Ommpa Loompa, King’s film also stars Olivia Colman, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, and Keegan-Michael Key.
Check out the official “Wonka” trailer above.
“Wonka” opens in theaters on December 15.
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