(AP) — Hugh Grant learned some years ago that if a filmmaker doesn’t make something from the heart, it shows. The films that work best, and are most loved, he's found, are the ones that the directors really meant.
It applied to his romantic comedies with Richard Curtis as well as “Paddington 2.” And he’s pretty sure it’s true of “ Wonka." The lavish big-screen musical about a young Willy Wonka — before Charlie, before the chocolate factory — is dancing into theaters this month with its heart on its velvet sleeve.
Like the “Paddington” movies, “Wonka” was dreamt up by Paul King, a lifetime Roald Dahl fan and a writer and director whom his collaborators somewhat universally agree may actually be Paddington in a human costume. With a beloved troupe of actors, including Grant, Timothée Chalamet, Olivia Colman, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Keegan-Michael Key, Natasha Rothwell, and Paterson Joseph, as well as newcomer Calah Lane, its vibrant costumes and sets and a contagious “let’s put on a show” energy, “Wonka” feels like a modern homage to classic MGM productions of the 1940s.
But King wasn’t so sure about “Wonka” at first. No one was, except for hitmaker producer David Heyman, whose credits include “Harry Potter,” “Paddington” and the biggest film of the year, “Barbie.” King worried that like so many other “brands,” a young Willy Wonka movie was something devised in a boardroom with visions of “12,000 movies and a TV show.”
Then he went back to the book, which he’d read so many times as a child that the pages fell out of the spine. This time he found not just a great character in Willy Wonka, an unapologetically flamboyant dreamer whom Dahl also seemed a bit obsessed with, but also a breakthrough about his work.
“I realized how informative Dahl had been to everything that I love about family movies. They’ve got these great heightened characters, but there’s a real beating heart to them,” King said. “It was like, oh this is the mothership.”
And, with his “Paddington 2” co-writer Simon Farnaby (of “stop that stunning sister” fame), he would spend years toiling over what they’re calling a companion piece to the Gene Wilder “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Chalamet, the wildly popular Oscar-nominated actor of “Call Me By Your Name” and “Dune,” wasn’t technically a song and dance man (though his digital footprint from his teen years contains some evidence to the contrary) when he signed on to play Wonka. But King was convinced that he was the perfect person to balance “sincere” and “ridiculous” thanks in part to his memorable (and “hella-tight”) performance in Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird.”
This was a little baffling to Chalamet, who only learned this at the premiere in London. But for him, “Wonka” was a chance to do something a bit different, on a grand scale. He also understands audiences being a little skeptical of any spin-off of a beloved character, but he takes comfort in something Gerwig said while they were making “Little Women.”
He recalled her telling him "something like, 'For anybody that’s saying that a lot of versions of this have been made, you know, when it’s done well, no one complains,’” he said. “I think Paul really did that here.”
Plus, in “Wonka,” he’d get the bonus of the “classic thespian challenge” of singing and dancing.
“It’s not necessarily what is in vogue as far as like behavioral acting and very natural storytelling, but when done right, it’s very joyful to do,” Chalamet said. “And as an audience member is very generous to receive.”
