2005 SUMMER PREVIEW

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

By Jamie Graham

From Total Film, May 2005

Burton! Depp! Lee! It's shaping up to be this summer's golden ticket . . .

Total Film screeches to a stop, eyes like proverbial saucers. A dash through the Inventing Room (Ooh . . . Trippy), the Nut Room (Ooh . . . Hallucinogenic) and the Chocolate Palace (Ooh . . . Brown) got the old peepers widening, but this is something else. This is wondrous . . .
"These are proper house and proper streets," gabs Alex McDowell, Charlie's Production Designer. He didn't need to say a word - it's plain to see, even with eyes on springs. Where five months ago there was only space, now stands a town comprised of snowy roads and telephone polls and brick houses. Not cardboard cut-outs, you understand, but the real, three-dimensional thing, built from the ground up.
Tim Burton is currently stood outside the gates of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, overseeing the kids' tentative arrival as Johnny Depp gets ready for his 'big entrance'. It's spectacular, but Total Film has promised not to give the game away . . . For now. Let's just say the Burton/Depp dream team are delivering. Big time. Roald Dahl must be grinning in his grave.
Fact! Johnny Depp is playing Wonka as part '70s glam-rock star and part Howard Hughes-style oddball recluse.

 

Tim Burton Q&A

The glorious King of Kook gives Charlie the Hollyweird treatment . . .

You're a big fan of the book, right?
Yeah. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a story I read as a child. Roald Dahl was one of the first children's authors who spoke to both children and adults. He's become more popular today but, to me, he was one of the first people to do that kind of literature.

Why did you opt to build the sets from scratch?
Nothing against the digital age, but it's nice to make sets. Ask any actor and they'll tell you that they much prefer to be on a set than against a bluescreen. I thought it was especially important because of the kids, too. I wanted them to feel like they were there.

Big Fish was about your father, in a way. Is this film about your son?
No. In fact, through my experience of having a child, I would probably want to do a horror movie or an alien movie more than something like this!

So how dark is your version going to be? Will it give kids nightmares?
Well, I get nightmares watching Teletubbies, so it depends on what gives you nightmares . . .