Clearly they decided to wait until Gene Wilder was safely dead before announcing this: “…it looks like Warner Bros. is going to take another shot at telling another story about Mr. Wonka. This time, the studio is teaming with producer David Heyman, whose recent work includes Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The movie will be about an early adventure that Willy Wonka goes on.” I feel safe in asserting that the CGI will saturate the film, and I am using ‘saturate’ in the physical chemistry sense.
It’s not so much that it’s a remake. Remakes can be tolerable. I actually enjoyed seeing how the Wilder Willy Wonka and the Depp Willy Wonka took two distinct takes on the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, not least because the people who ran both of the productions actually liked the original book, and wanted to make a movie that was evocative of it. And, before you ask: I’m not concerned that Warner Bros. wants to create a new cinematic cash cow. No, what concerns me is that they’re possibly all right with creating a fairly pointless and generic cash cow. There’s a limited number of movies that the big studios can make every year. If they must try to cash in on my nostalgia, the least that they can do is make the effort to produce something I’d like in spite of myself.
An interesting film could be made about Wonka’s “liberation” of the Umpa Lumpas… I would imagine they’d have to steer clear of the original version of the Umpa Lumpas though.
Why won’t they just do Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator?
Would Dahl’s estate allow them to?
For the right price, I expect so.
Because it’s Hollywood .. “origin stories” are what they all want to do this season.
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Mew