New ‘Willy Wonka’ Could See the Makings of a Chocolate Factory

We’re getting another Willy Wonka movie, but it’s not going to be another reboot of the original film, or even a retelling of the source material, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Instead, it might be an origin story, exploring Willy Wonka before the Golden Tickets, before Charlie, and before he had a candy empire.

In a recent interview, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Harry Potter producer David Heyman spoke about the Willy Wonka film that’s still in its infancy. But, he did confirm it’ll likely be the story of what came before and who Willy Wonka was before he grew old and handed his legacy down to Charlie.

“It’s challenging because you don’t have Dahl, you don’t have a Dahl book, and yet you have a Dahl character,” said Heyman. “But I think there’s a lot in his character that suggests who he is and also where he might come from or what his childhood or his middle age might have been like. So we’re exploring that.”

In terms of original books, there’s no source material for Willy Wonka before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which means that the team behind this film will be able to write the book on him, so to speak. Details are still scant, but we’re excited to see what made Willy Wonka the colorful, boisterous character that remains one of fiction’s very best.