Willy Wonka big screen reboot is in the works

A new film is being planned around the character of Willy Wonka, the eccentric chocolatier at the center of Roald Dahl’s children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

The revival is being brought to the screen by Harry Potter producer David Heyman, according to Variety. The Secret Life of Pets writer Simon Rich is handling the screenplay.

Heyman has experience in rebooting franchises having produced the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which serves as a prequel to Harry Potter, taking place 70 years before Potter ventured to Hogwarts.

The new Willy Wonka film is said to not to be an adaptation of one of Dahl’s two books featuring the character, but a standalone film focused on Wonka’s early adventures. It’s stressed, however, that the film will not be an origin story.

Variety hints that Charlie, the young boy who wins a golden ticket to Wonka’s chocolate factory in the first book, might not make an appearance in the film, suggesting that he’ll appear in “future installments of a possible franchise” if the revamp is a hit.

Wonka was last played onscreen by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s 2005 blockbuster Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The original Willy Wonka, Gene Wilder, who played the character in the 1971 adaptation, died in August at age 83 from complications from Alzheimer’s. No cast has been announced of yet for the new film.

Dahl’s creation also got a stage musical adaptation courtesy of director Sam Mendes in 2003.