Early life of Willy Wonka for third film
Wilder’s acting key to the Jekyll and Hyde character of Wonka
There’s a new Willy Wonka movie in the works. According to Variety, Warner Bros has acquired the rights to Willy Wonka from the Roald Dahl Estate.
The movie will reportedly be focused solely on Willy Wonka and his early adventures.
If it goes ahead, it will be the third movie about the eccentric candy maker after 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder and 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp.
Gene Wilder had one very specific request before he agreed to play Willy Wonka.
The actor demanded that they use his idea for Willy Wonka’s first appearance in the film.
“When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp,” Wilder wrote in a letter to director Mel Stuart.
“After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realise that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.”
When asked why he was so adamant about this scene, Wilder replied, “From that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth”.
According to Paris Themmen (who played Mike Teevee) the 10 Oompa Loompas were “notoriously mischievous” behind the scenes.
“They were often drunk after a day’s shooting,” Themmen said during a Reddit Ask me Anything session.
“We all stayed in a hotel together. In those days, when you wanted to have your shoes shined, you’d leave them outside of your hotel room door.
“One night the Oompa Loompas grabbed all the shoes, tied the laces together, and left them in a pile to be found in the morning.” And that chocolate river? “No other factory in the world mixes its chocolate by waterfall,” Wonka says in the movie.
But alas, that chocolate river wasn’t actually real.
“The river was made of water with food colouring,” Themmen said. Themmen was paid $US500 per week for the nine weeks of filming, as well as a free trip with his family to Germany where the movie was filmed.
In a Reddit AMA, he revealed that he also gets the occasional cheque in the mail for his work in the film. “I get residuals when the film is shown on network TV, not for cable, DVD, or VHS sales,” Themmen said.