Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. So, Variety is reporting that Harry Potter producer David Heyman has scooped up the rights to Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka character and is planning on a series of films that begins pre-Chocolate Factory. The Secret Lives of Pets' Simon Rich is writing the script for the first film.
This sounds like a terrible, shitty, awful idea, but the one glimmer of hope is that David Heyman is spearheading this. He saw what Harry Potter could become before anybody else (JK Rowling notwithstanding) did and he was one of the key creative forces that made that film series into what it is today. If he sees something here then he might just be able to make it work.
But, man, I don't see a path here. Wonka works as a mysterious, unpredictable kook. You make him the star of some zany adventures and you lose that, leaving behind a simple buffoon.
Gene Wilder created magic in that role. I don't know if that magic can be duplicated. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp tried and failed so hard that you'd think that would have killed the IP for at least a generation.
I don't know about this one, folks.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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