‘Wonka’ Director didn’t really want to reinvent the wheel with Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa
The first trailer for ‘Wonka’ showcases Timothée Chalamet’s singing and dancing chops as the young eccentric chocolatier of the beloved Roald Dahl’s tale. It also ends with a surprise. It reveals Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa with orange skin, a nod to the original 1971 movie adaptation.
‘Wonka,’ helmed by Paddington writer-director Paul King, takes moviegoers to the earlier years of Willy Wonka before he reign as the most famous chocolate mogul.
‘Wonka’ Director ‘didn’t really want to reinvent the wheel’ with Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa
The trailer, released on July 11, shows Wonka befriending a young orphaned girl (Calah Lane), who later joins him as his right-hand assistant in creating chocolate varieties. He also faces trouble going toe-to-toe with members of the ‘chocolate cartel” in a fictional European city. The prequel musical film cannot be complete without the fun-size factory helpers, the Oompa Loompas.
“You’re the funny little man who’s been following me,” Wonka says to pint-size Grant sporting green hair and orange skin trapped in a glass jar.
“I will have you know that I am a perfectly respectable size for an Oompa Loompa,” he says leaving Wonka confused. To refresh his memory, he wields a piccolo and proceeds with the classic Oompa Loompa tune.
Wonka refuses, but the soon-to-be loyal chocolate henchman reasons, “Too late. I’ve started dancing now,” he adds. “Once we’ve started, we can’t stop.”
The 62-year-old British actor is best known for his roles in “Noting Hill,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “The Gentlemen.”
Starring alongside Chalamet and Grant are Olivia Colman (The Crown), Keegan-Michael Key (The Super Mario Bros. Movie), Natasha Rothwell (Insecure), and Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean). King also brings some of Paddington’s previous cast, such as Sally Hawkins, Matt Lucas, Tom Davis, and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith.
King casting Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa
Photo Credits: ‘Wonka’ trailer (2023)
Grant’s casting first debuts during the CinemaCon 2023 in Las Vegas, last April. King, who previously cast Grant in “Paddington 2,” as the villainous Phoenix Buchanan, shares how the casting comes about.
“Going back to the book, and reading all those poems, and hearing [the Oompa Loompas’] voice as a very sort of cynical, sarcastic, cruel, funny, but wicked voice, I went, ‘Oh… That’s sort of a bit like Hugh!’” the Wonka director tells Empire Magazine. “It was a real light bulb moment – you go, ‘Hugh Grant’s an Oompa-Loompa! Yes please! Merry Christmas, with a bow on it.’”
With ‘Wonka’ to be released within five months, King says the visual effects for Grant’s character is still in the works. However, he says he’s loving what he’s seeing so far.
“He looks terrific but because it’s CG, it looks terrible until it looks good,” King shares. “And then you go, ‘Ah, perfect!’ It’s a miracle,” he adds.
King’s iteration of the Oompa Loompa diverts back to Mel Stuart’s 1971 film starring Gene Wilder. He also says he would not want to stray from Stuart’s interpretation, as he “liked [the original] too much.”
“I suppose because the ’71 movie is so beloved by me, as well as other people, I didn’t really want to reinvent the wheel on that.,” King told Empire magazine.
I felt like doing something that sat with that iconography. I love ‘Pure Imagination.’ I love the Oompa Loompa songs, I loved how the Oompa Loompas looked. And that felt like the iconic look of Oompa Loompas,” he adds.
Stuart opts for the orange-faced Oompa Loompa after Dahl’s first text sparks racial backlash from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Illustrations of the Oompa-Loompas from the novel were initially based on the African Pygmy people.
Chalamet’s viral high school rap videos score him the gig
Photo Credits: ‘Wonka’ trailer (2023)
“It was a straight offer because he’s great, and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” King says on casting Chalamet, as per his Rolling Stone interview.
He also discloses that the actor did not have to audition for the role. Despite reports of Warner Bros. considering the likes of Donald Glover, Ezra Miller, and Ryan Gosling to play Willy Wonka.
King also says being Chalamet’s “stan” lets him know the actor could sing and dance. “But because he’s Timothée Chalamet and his life is so absurd, his high school musical “>Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well,” King shares.
‘Wonka,’ the third opus of the beloved chocolatier, arrives in Philippine theaters on January 8, 2024. Watch the trailer below.
