“It was a straight offer because he’s great and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” King said. “But because he’s Timothée Chalamet and his life is so absurd, his high school musical performances are on YouTube and have hundreds of thousands of views. So I knew from stanning for Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well.”
‘Wonka’ Trailer: Timothée Chalamet Dances, Hugh Grant Transforms Into an Oompa-Loompa and More
King continued, “I knew that was in his arsenal, but I didn’t know how good he was. When I spoke to him he was quite keen. He’d done tap dancing in high school and he was like, ‘I’d quite like to show people I can do that.’”
“Wonka” is a “proper” musical that feels like “a really fun hat off to the golden age of MGM musicals,” King said of the project. The director is best known for helming the beloved “Paddington” movies, but he said “Wonka” has a much different tone.
“Certainly, I tried to have darker characters than [what] you would find in a ‘Paddington’ movie, for example,” King told Rolling Stone. “It’s a crueler world and it’s a meaner world that Willy Wonka finds himself in because that’s the sort of city that Charlie grows up in. Unlike the ‘Paddington’ world, not everyone is nice in a Roald Dahl world. I definitely got to play with those grotesque ideas, but I hope not to damage a generation of children.”
Wonka opens in theaters nationwide December 15 from Warner Bros.
