This week, Warner Bros. announced it will produce a new Willy Wonka movie — you know, the daffy guy in the book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” so memorably played by Gene Wilder in 1971.
And then somewhat less so by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s 2005 take.
According to Variety, the new movie will be a prequel of sorts about how Wonka got his start — before he became the loony recluse we met in “Charlie.” This, on its face, is not exactly encouraging. Prequels, particularly when they’re not written by the story’s original creator, tend to suck: Just think back to last year’s “Pan.”
But there’s reason for hope. One of the producers of WB’s new project is Michael Siegel, manager of the Roald Dahl estate — Dahl being, of course, the author of the book upon which the movies were based, along with “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,” a sequel that so far has proven to be too dauntingly weird for anyone to adapt into a film.
Therein lies the great hope for this new project. It’s possible Warner could look at the runaway success of London and Broadway’s “Matilda” for inspiration. This — an adaptation of another Dahl book (also a 1996 movie) — is a wonderfully nightmarish spectacle that’s earned raves from both kids and their parents.
This is the genius of Roald Dahl, whose children’s books — which also include “The BFG” and “James and the Giant Peach” — are reliably strange, more than a little gruesome, wickedly funny and occasionally downright cruel. They don’t talk down to kids, and they sometimes border on being too scary for the littler ones. In other words, they’re wildly entertaining.
Then there’s the stuff Dahl wrote for adults, which was downright raunchy. As the Guardian put it: “His adult material is not for prudes. The ‘horny’ character Uncle Oswald, ‘the greatest fornicator of all time,’ gets a novel to himself and pops up in ‘Switch Bitch’ — a collection of short stories that originally appeared in Playboy. In ‘Bitch,’ following a scientific experiment to produce a scent that stimulates sexual attraction, he turns into a 7-foot penis that floats into space, declaring, ‘But tell me truly, did you ever see/a sexual organ quite so grand as me?’ ”
No one’s suggesting that Warner put a giant floating phallus in a Wonka reboot. But if Siegel’s allowed to hire writers who can channel the spirit of Dahl’s edgy writing for kids, this new venture might actually be worth something. For starters, we recommend they review these excerpts from a few of Dahl’s great books:
“I’m afraid the camera got smashed against the side of the Space Hotel, Mr. President,” Shuckworth replied. The President said a very rude word into the microphone and ten million children across the nation began repeating it gleefully and got smacked by their parents.
— “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator”
It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.
— “Matilda”
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.
— “The Twits”
“Giants isn’t eating each other either,” the BFG said. “Nor is giants killing each other. Giants is not very lovely, but they is not killing each other. Nor is crockadowndillies killing other crockadowndillies. Nor is pussy-cats killing pussy-cats.”
“They kill mice,” Sophie said.
“Ah, but they is not killing their own kind,” the BFG said. “Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind . . . Human beans is squishing each other all the time . . . They is shootling guns and going up in aerioplanes to drop their bombs on each other’s heads every week. Human beans is always killing other human beans.”
— “The BFG”
And finally, from Dahl’s “Revolting Rhymes,” a novel take on the classic in his “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf”:
The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.