Timothée Chalamet is your new Willy Wonka

By Britt Hayes | May 24, 2021 | 4:10pm

Film Features Willy Wonka

Timothée Chalamet is your new Willy Wonka

Timothée Chalamet Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP

The passage of time has done little to erase the cursed image that is Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka from our brains, but maybe tossing a cute little hat on Timmy Chalamet’s precious noggin will do the trick. Deadline reports that Chalamet has signed on to play the title role in Wonka, the upcoming prequel film which will explore the origins of the character created by Roald Dahl and famously portrayed by Gene Wilder in 1971's Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory. Like that film, the prequel is said to be a musical, and if tossing a bowtie on a fancy lad named Timothée Chalamet and making him do a little song-and-dance wasn’t twee enough for you, Wonka will be directed by Paul King—the man behind those adorable Paddington movies Film Twitter loves so dang much.

Willy Wonka feels like a hard left after Call Me By Your Name, two Greta Gerwig films, and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune—at least until you remember the career trajectory of Ryan Gosling, and then it all kind of makes sense. We’re about a year at most away from lil Tim Tim releasing a chill wave album. At any rate, we’ve already lived through Johnny Depp playing this old maniac with a candy factory like Michael Jackson, so it literally can only be better than that.