Timothée Chalamet will play a young Willy Wonka… | Little White Lies

Incoming

Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met will play a young Willy Won­ka in a new prequel

24 May 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Smiling young man with curly brown hair wearing a pinstriped waistcoat and white shirt stands in front of a blue backdrop with "LITTLEWG" text.
Smiling young man with curly brown hair wearing a pinstriped waistcoat and white shirt stands in front of a blue backdrop with "LITTLEWG" text.
He’s set to take the lead in an ori­gin sto­ry from Padding­ton direc­tor Paul King.

Timoth­ée Cha­la­met is an actor of great ver­sa­til­i­ty, or at least that’s what his recent résumé would have us believe. He broke out in 2017 as a moody, intense heart­throb in Lady Bird and a moody, intense lovelorn teen in Call Me By Your Name, then had a ban­ner 2019 as a moody, intense Prince Hal in The King and a moody, intense gen­tle­man caller in Lit­tle Women.

He’ll pre­sum­ably bring his moody inten­si­ty and intense mood­i­ness to the unex­pect­ed role of Willy Won­ka, in light of today’s announce­ment that he’ll por­tray the can­dy mag­nate in a new film from Padding­ton 2 direc­tor Paul King. Accord­ing to Dead­lines exclu­sive, he’ll appear as Won­ka in his younger years for an ori­gin sto­ry of sorts, a premise that imme­di­ate­ly invites a few dif­fer­ent lines of questioning.

Right off the bat, those famil­iar with the source text from Roald Dahl’s nov­els will won­der if the film will dare explore Wonka’s ori­gins as an impe­ri­al­ist slave dri­ver, gone to Africa to cap­ture and relo­cate the Oom­pa Loom­pa pop­u­la­tion whose labor would prop up his sug­ary empire. While the films with Gene Wilder and John­ny Depp elid­ed this much, Dahl made sure to canon­i­cal­ly spec­i­fy that Won­ka had tak­en up the so-called white man’s burden”.

Alter­nate­ly, will the CGI ghost of Christo­pher Lee return to reprise his role of Wonka’s father, as shown in the Tim Bur­ton movies? On both counts, the answer is most like­ly no,’ though one thing that has been con­firmed is that Cha­la­met will get to show off his singing and danc­ing skills in a pro­fes­sion­al capac­i­ty for the first time, so, you win some and you lose some.

Details of plot are still up in the air, though the Dead­line item does men­tion that good old Char­lie Buck­et will not have a pres­ence in the new film, with Won­ka tak­ing cen­ter stage. Either way, we’re bound for a return to the world of pure imagination.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.