Timothée Chalamet To Play Young Willie Wonka In New Movie Musical

The big screen’s most famous musical candy man is coming back, this time with Timothée Chalamet spinning adventures of chocolatey pure imagination.

What Happened: According to a Deadline report, AT&T Inc. T subsidiary Warner Bros. has cast Chalamet in the title role of “Wonka,” which will focus on the life of a young Willy Wonka in the years before he opened his chocolate factory staffed with an Oompa Loompa workforce.

The new film is slated to be an original musical, which will enable Chalamet to make his big-screen song-and-dance debut. Paul King, director of the “Paddington” films, co-wrote the screenplay and will direct "Wonka," which is slated for a 2023 release.

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Why It Matters: The character of Willy Wonka was created by British writer Roald Dahl for his 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” The book was adapted into the 1971 film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” which became a beloved film classic, although Dahl disliked the film. He complained about the changes made to his story and argued that madcap Anglo-Irish comic Spike Milligan would have been a better Wonka instead of Gene Wilder.

The Dahl story had two additional screen adaptations: Tim Burton’s 2005 “Charlie and Chocolate Factory” starring Johnny Depp as Wonka and the 2017 direct-to-video animated feature “Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” A Netflix Inc NFLX animated television series was announced in 2018 but has yet to be produced. The property also inspired two different theatrical stage versions and an opera.

Chalamet, who was Oscar-nominated for 2017’s “Call Me By Your Name,” was last seen in the 2019 “Little Women” and will appear later this year in three major releases: Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” co-starring Oscar Isaac and Zendaya, Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” co-starring Frances McDormand, and Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.

(Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "Dune," to be released later this year. Photo courtesy Warner Bros.)