Got your golden ticket? Because it looks like a return trip to visit Willy Wonka is right around the corner. Warner Bros. has been trying to unwrap a new movie based on Roald Dahl’s oddball candymaker for a while now, and it’s tough to argue with who they’ve found to do it. THR reports director Paul King, who has delivered two wonderfully whimsical and fun Paddington movies, is in final talks for the job.
Dahl wrote a couple of books featuring Wonka, 1964’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Gene Wilder left an unforgettable impression as Wonka in the classic 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, while Johnny Depp did some weird Michael Jackson-esque thing in the 2005 movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
This new film will have a script by Simon Rich and will reunite King with producer David Heyman, and the hope is they can launch a franchise. It’s been suggested in the past that this might be a prequel, but for now the story is being kept as secret as the formula for Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper.
