Timothée Chalamet, one of the great youth stars of cinema, reinvents the most famous chocolate maker, the character of Willy Wonka. Recently the actor confessed that he hesitated to accept the lead role, because he wanted to make sure that it was not a film that only prioritized money and not the story.
In an interview for GamesRadar, the actor revealed his doubts about whether it was good to accept the lead role and how he feels protective of the character. “Like a lot of people, when they make remakes, I feel very protective of the original character and the versions that you love. Your eyebrows raise in skepticism about [si] “Is it a legitimate and valuable story or a cynical pursuit of money.”
Likewise, he commented that when he read the script all his doubts were gone: “But I was reading the first three pages of the script and the song ‘Hat Full of Dreams’ was there. And there was no music to go with it, but the lyrics were very clever,” Chalamet told GamesRadar.
His Wonka retains the magic and appeal of the original, but chooses to offer a less sinister and more sugar-coated vision of it. In an interview with EFE in London, Chalamet, 27, confessed that one of his reasons for making the film was “that intelligent look at a character that is very dear to me.” “I would have felt more blasphemous for trying to retell the original story than for telling a new story of what he was like in his origin,” he explained.
Wonka delivers a visual feast with an all-star cast in which director Paul King (author of Paddington) invents the origin of the eccentric candy maker and his odyssey to fulfill his dream of becoming a manufacturer of the best chocolate in the world.
To do this, he will face a cartel of chocolate makers who almost seem to function as drug traffickers, as well as corrupt police officers and the diabolical owner of a boarding house (Olivia Colman) to whom he sells his soul. With this role, Chalamet follows in the footsteps of two legends, Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp, who played Wonka in adaptations of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.
“You have to make your own creation, because they are giants of cinema. “This movie is actually the companion piece to the Gene Wilder movie,” said Chalamet, who cited working with King and the cast full of British stars, such as Colman and Hugh Grant, as two of the great attractions in Wonka.
Wonka Director Paul King Defends Willy Wonka’s Youth
King, screenwriter of the film, defended his decision to imagine Willy Wonka’s youth and illuminate a character full of purity that has not yet been contaminated, he declared in an interview.
“In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka is almost a chocolate guy. He has a fragile, slightly cynical exterior, but at his heart there is that extraordinary act of generosity of looking for a child to give him the work to which he has dedicated his life, ”said Paul King.
Hence his film, set 25 years before the original, focuses on “how this character with that pure imagination in his heart and an optimistic vision of humanity comes to develop such fragile skin.”
For King, the best thing about the film is that it deals with great universal issues but with a touch of lightness “through grotesque and very funny characters” who are dominated “by greed, which is the great central theme of Charlie and the Factory. chocolate”. Wonka talks about dreams. Of dreams full of chocolate. And Chalamet is clear, in his real life, what his are.
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