Wonka: Is the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Spinoff a Prequel or Reboot?

Warner Bros. is making a spinoff of the classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a children's book created by Roald Dhal. This time, though, instead of having Johnny Depp star as Willy Wonka, Timothée Chalamet is leading the film. Now, the question is, does this make the Wonka movie a prequel or a reboot?

Is the Wonka Movie a Prequel or a Reboot?

The Wonka movie has long been in the works since Warner Bros. acquired the rights to the original character back in 2016.

Most prominently portrayed in the modern era by Johnny Depp in the 2005 Tim Burton-helmed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Chalamet is set to showcase his own take on the titular chocolatier, playing his younger version, before he even built his own factory.

The official trailer included the synopsis of the Wonka film, which you can read below:

"Based on the extraordinary character at the center of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl's most iconic children's book and one of the best-selling children's books of all time, Wonka tells the wondrous story of how the world's greatest inventor, magician and chocolate-maker became the beloved Willy Wonka we know today."

The synopsis confirms two things: the Willy Wonka that Chalamet is portraying will, in fact, still be based on Dahl's character and the potentiality of the film's connection with the initial Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

As for whether the Wonka film is a prequel or reboot, it most definitely is a prequel, and here's why.

Is the Wonka Movie Connected to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Movies?

Back in the early days of producing the Wonka movie, the movie producer David Heyman (Fantastic Beasts) outrightly told Collider that the upcoming film is a prequel, not a sequel of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

"We are still trying to figure out how to tell that story, what the story is. It's a prequel, it's not a sequel. What makes Willy - when we find him at the chocolate factory doing the golden ticket, where is he before that? What leads him to that place where he's locked himself away? It's how does he get there? So we're playing around with that."

"It's not a remake. They're done two films, quite different. But it's possibly an origin story. We're just in the early stages of it... It's challenging because you don't have Dahl, you don't have a Dahl book, and yet you have a Dahl character."

"But I think there's a lot in his character that suggests who he is and also where he might come from or what his childhood or his middle age might have been like. So we're exploring that."

What remains to be seen is whether the Wonka film plans on including the old backstory of the titular chocolatier.

You can stick around for more news stories and updates about the Wonka film right here on EpicStream!