Whilst the Wonka prequel would appear to be in the promising hands of Paul King, who directed the wonderful Paddington and Paddington 2, and David Heyman, who produced all the Harry Potter films and the Fantastic Beasts series, there remains an innate issue with exploring the earlier years of the chocolatier.
The character of Willy Wonka is meant to be impenetrable, enigmatic, unknowable. In Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Roald Dahl’s 1972 follow-up book, Charlie’s Grandma Josephine on her first meeting with Willy Wonka, comes to the immediate judgement: ‘I don’t think I trust this gentleman very much.’
The character’s unique quality is that we can never quite get a handle on him – and because of this, Wonka’s declaration towards the end of the original book “Nothing’s impossible” remains credible. To ground the character and explain away the details of his mystery is to rob him of his unlimited possibilities.
To use a suitably sweet metaphor, knowing the chemical process about how candy floss is made will not make it any tastier.
According to film magazine, Collider, while actors such as Ezra Miller, Donald Glover and Ryan Gosling were originally in the frame when the film was first mooted, Warner Bros are apparently trying to lure either Tom Holland or Timothée Chalamet to play the eponymous maker of chocolates and dreams.