PADDINGTON Director Takes on Willy Wonka in New Movie
By Movieguide® Contributor
As the first trailer for the upcoming WONKA movie releases, director Paul King wants audiences to get excited for his whimsical, family-fun adventure.
“I think it captures the spirit [of the movie] really well,” King told Rolling Stone about the trailer. “I love it. I was delighted with it. It feels fun and colorful and funny and Christmas-y, and it’s got great music. It’s very Hollywood, which was funny for me. I very much like the heavenly choir [sound] when it says, ‘From the director of PADDINGTON.’ That’s probably the most embarrassing moment of my life to date. I didn’t ask for that! They just did it.”
While the trailer – and movie – bring Wonka to a new setting, King was not looking to reinvent the character. His goal was to capture the essence of the classical Gene Wilder rendition, but with a younger Wonka as he first starts his chocolateiring business.
“I thought, ‘Oh, that could be a fun place for Willy Wonka to turn up and be chaotic and messy and brightly colored and modern and turbocharge a new era,” King said. “Like its predecessor, it embraces whimsy and magic.”
“I didn’t want to reinvent those things ‘cause it felt like that ’71 movie had come up with these incredibly enduring, iconic looks,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “What I wanted this movie to be was a companion piece to that movie. It you imagine those people in that world 25 years earlier, that was my starting process. Eventually, he would grow into that person and that factory.”
An iconic aspect of the Gene Wilder movie that King looked to capture was the musicality of the character. WONKA takes this to a new level as Wonka’s character, played by Timothée Chalamet, performs seven different musical numbers.
“The 1971 movie, just because I’m as old as I am, was burnt into my eyeballs as a kid,” King explained. “I always loved the songs in that – Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley were incredible songwriters. The spirit of that and the joy of that seemed really important to the nature of this movie.”
“Reading the book, there’s so much that Dahl writes in verse. So it felt like a no-brainer this should have songs in it. It was a really fun challenge for me because it wasn’t something I’d done in that sense before. I’ve always had music and singing in things that I’ve done, but to actually do proper musical sequences was a really fun challenge. And because the film is set in the late ‘40s, it felt like a really fun hat off to the golden age of MGM musicals.”
King also wanted to capture the comedy found in the original novel written by Roald Dahl, that of kids falling into chocolate rivers and growing plump with blueberry juice, while also delivering the character’s emotional core.
“[Dahl] makes his story-book world with these larger-than-life characters and ridiculous, comic things that happen, but at the same time, you deeply care,” King explained. “I love the idea of telling a story where Willy Wonka wasn’t just this magical, admirable, extraordinary, investitive character, but where he was actually the emotional heart of the movie.”
However, in making the movie as family-friendly as possible, King strayed away from the macabre aspects that appear in both the novel and the Gene Wilder movie. The movie does, however, include darker characters than were found in King’s previous PADDINGTON movies.
“There’s a macabre quality to Dahl that I love in the way her writes stories,” King said. “He touches places I couldn’t possibly go because my mind is more sugar-coated and I’m more there for the candy.”
“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,” he continued. “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.
WONKA is slated to release on December 15th.
Movieguide® previously reported on WONKA:
“To work on something that will have an uncynical young audience, that was just a big joy,” Chalamet said. “That’s why I was drawn to it. In a time and climate of intense political rhetoric, when there’s so much bad news all the time, this is hopefully going to be a piece of chocolate.”
WONKA tells the story of the beloved Roald Dahl character in a much more uplifting way than the previous cynical iterations. While the previous movies explored Wonka’s cynical view of the world after making it to the top, the upcoming movie follows Wonka at the start of his chocolate business and the whimsical adventures he embarks on earlier in his life, such as meeting the Oompa Loompas.
“This is a Willy that’s full of joy and hope and desire to become the greatest chocolatier,” Chalamet said.
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