Wonka: all-dancing Timothée Chalamet in new teaser trailer
Along with Chalamet, the film stars Olivia Colman, Sally Hawkins, Keegan-Michael Key, Matthew Baynton, Matt Lucas, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carter, Natasha Rothwell, Simon Farnaby, Paterson Joseph, Tom Davis, Rakhee Thakrar, Justin Edwards, Colin O’Brien, Ellie White, Freya Parker and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith.
In the trailer for Wonka, we meet Chalamet’s young aspiring chocolatier. “I’m something of a magician, inventor, chocolate maker,” he says to a crowd gathered in a town square. The whimsy continues as Chalamet’s Wonka has to contend with a “chocolate cartel” preventing his own chocolate business from getting off the ground.
“You can’t get a shop without selling chocolate,” says a stern Jim Carter, who plays Aruthur Slugworth, Wonka’s biggest business rival. “And you can’t sell chocolate without a shop.
Chalamet steps into shoes previously filled by Gene Wilder in 1971 and Johnny Depp in 2005. Rather than retell Dahl’s 1964 book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” writer-director Paul King has imagined a plucky, striving take on the character in what he calls a “companion piece” to the 1971 film.
In true Christmas movie fashion, Wonka and his imagination will presumably win out, setting the stage for older Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers and chocolate river.
The Dune and Call Me by Your Name actor stars as a young version of Willy Wonka, the eccentric chocolate mogul, before he opens his factory, having spent “seven years traveling the world perfecting” his craft. The film also stars Hugh Grant as a CGI Oompa Loompa with Olivia Colman, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson and Keegan-Michael Key filling out the cast.
The casting was first announced during CinemaCon in Las Vegas earlier this year, and Grant’s bright orange face surfaces at the end of the film’s trailer. Timothée Chalamet’s Willy Wonka, a younger version of the beloved chocolatier from Roald Dahl’s Charlie.
Willy Wonka debuted in Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which follows Charlie Bucket, a poor boy who wins a golden ticket to tour Wonka’s famous chocolate factory. Film adaptations include 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” starring Gene Wilder as Wonka, and Tim Burton’s 2005 film with Johnny Depp in the iconic role.
King, director of the beloved “Paddington” and “Paddington 2,” has cast familiar faces including Sally Hawkins, Tom Davis and Simon Farnaby, alongside Olivia Colman, Rowan Atkinson, Keegan-Michael Key and newcomer Calah Lane. And in a casting coup for the ages, the film sees King team up once more with Hugh Grant, this time playing a grumpy, flute-playing Oompa-Loompa.