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The Roald Dahl curse

When Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl catalog in 2021, Forbes’ Scott Mendelson described the acquisition as a “huge risk”.  Why?  Well, Roald Dahl’s films haven’t historically done well at the box office.  With the obvious exception of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl film adaptations are almost always a financial failure.

Not a single Roald Dahl adaptation (sans Charlie) has grossed more than double its budget.  On paper, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG may look like it made some money, but if you take into account the advertising and marketing costs, it ended up being one of Spielberg’s only “money-losing mega-flops” (see the above Forbes article).  Financial information is largely unavailable on 2020′s The Witches, but considering it went straight to HBO Max during the pandemic and received disastrous reviews from critics, I think it’s safe to say that film was not one of Dahl’s successes.

Again, financial success does not correlate to critical success, as almost all of Dahl’s adaptations have become cult classics, and the only mega-blockbuster is probably the most divisive film adaptation of the bunch.  However, I agree with Forbes that pursuing any Roald Dahl adaptation nowadays is a big risk.

However, the magic that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had is (arguably) star power.  Any Johnny Depp/Tim Burton collaboration in the mid-2000s was a license to print money.  Now, Paul King isn’t a household name, mainly because he hasn’t done much outside of those two Paddington movies.  Timothée Chalamet, however, is a household name, and his loyal army of young supporters does bear a resemblance to the following Depp had in the 2000s.

It also helps the 2023 film’s prospects that Willy Wonka is by far the most iconic and recognizable Roald Dahl property, and that the 1971′s financial underperformance could be considered a fluke since it was released more than fifty years ago when moviegoing in general was vastly different.  This was years before summer movies were considered a thing.  Wonka will be the definitive factor as to whether or not the Willy Wonka property is the one exception to the Roald Dahl curse, or if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory alone is the exception.

Releasing a candy-themed movie in Winter (and competition)

I’ll preempt this by saying that it’s entirely possible that Wonka may succumb to a shuffle in Warner Bros. release lineup.  Preferably, that would result in the movie being released sooner rather than later, but November sees the release of Dune: Part Two and two back-to-back Chamalet films seem unlikely.

Wonka (coming December 15, 2023) is the first Wonka movie to be released in December, as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was released in June and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was released in July.  This seems like a no-brainer and will most likely help the film rather than hurt it.  There are all kinds of snowy environments (from what we’ve seen from the on-location shooting) and any movie about candy will be a perfect Christmas film.

It’s easy to look at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s box office and say that it’s a safe bet to release a movie like this in summer, but the truth is that the summer of 2005 wasn't a summer populated with hits.  July 2005 saw the release of Fantastic Four... Sky High... uh... March of the Penguins... and that's it as far as movies that kids would have any interest in seeing (unless there was some awesome kid out there eagerly awaiting The Devils Rejects).  In fact, July 2005 was such an underwhelming month for kids movies that Charlie’s main competition for it’s opening weekend was considered to be the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the book, not the movie).  That’s right, there were a handful of people that just didn't go to the theaters that weekend because they were reading.

But speaking of competition, let’s look at the movies that are coming out the same weekend as Wonka...

Oh... there aren’t any...

Yeah, it’s probably because we’re still twelve months out, but Wonka is the only movie scheduled for the first nineteen days of December 2023.  Obviously, this isn’t going to stay the same, so we’ll just have to see what movies Wonka has to face against in its opening weekend.  December 20th sees the release of The Color Purple, which is also a musical.  It’s too early to say what age group it’ll be aiming for, but considering the first movie was PG-13 and the story is so profound, I’d imagine there will be families seeing it.  December 20th also sees the release of the next Ghostbusters movie, which is an odd choice because I’ve always associated Ghostbusters with autumn and halloween, but whatever. This, to me, poses the strongest competition to Wonka of all the December releases on the calendar so far.  It’s releasing only five days after Wonka, and I think once Ghostbusters hits theaters, the kids are going to dig the adventure and spookiness, and Ghostbusters will be the go-to movie for families after December 20th.  But more on what kids will be looking for in Wonka later...

Appeal to children

Or actually, more on that now!  This one may not spring to mind for most people, but as someone who was five years old when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was released, I remember the movie being sold to me on the appeal of the child characters.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had a pretty great marketing campaign that emphasized each of the nasty children.  As a kid, I thought the kids were the highlight of the film.  Wonka wasn’t a character I appreciated until I got older.

I mention this because Wonka most likely won’t have child characters as iconic as the previous two iterations, and part of me wonders if a kid is going to see the promotional material for Wonka and beg their parents to see it.

The chocolate factory was also an appealing aspect to 5-year-old me.  A chocolate waterfall with a pink boat, a room with squirrels, the glass elevator passing by room after room of dream-like gadgetry...  Obviously, because this is a prequel, there will most likely be very little of the chocolate factory in the movie, and they won’t be used in the marketing because they wouldn’t want to spoil the end.  Now because it is a Willy Wonka movie, there’s going to be some kind of magic-like candy environments (we know they are going to Loompaland), even though it won’t be the factory itself.  We don’t know anything about what the movie has shot on soundstages, but one can imagine it’s absolutely more magical than the on-location shooting they were doing in dour Londontown.

How much it appeals to children is one aspect of the project that I can’t really judge it on because there hasn’t been a trailer yet.  I will say that, beyond the child characters and the factory, the trailers need to have a tone that looks fun.  Wonka so far looks smart and it looks sentimental, which means it’s skewing close to the 70s film.  There needs to be some wackiness, some adventure and some pure childish fun—all things that the Tim Burton movie got across very well in it’s advertising—to make Wonka a movie that kids will drag their parents to, and not the other way around.

What?  A Willy Wonka prequel?  Can’t Hollywood get some new ideas blah blah blah

Even though there have only been two Willy Wonka movies over the last fifty years, people somehow have it in their minds that the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory franchise is one that Hollywood continually pillages.  I mean, there have been 25 James Bond movies in roughly the same amount of time.

However, a major hurdle that Wonka will have to deal with is perception.  Most people are going to say to themselves “Why are they making a Willy Wonka prequel?  Who asked for this?”  Admit it, you were saying this yourself before you learned about the movie’s exceptional cast and crew (heck, you may still be saying it).  The public nowadays is very keen to the notion that Hollywood pillages every franchise it can lay it’s hands on, with Disney’s endless barrage of remakes, prequels, and legacy sequels being the most prominent example.  The advertisers of Wonka are going to have a challenge convincing the public that this a story worth telling and worth seeing, and not just a soulless studio attempt at making a buck off the Willy Wonka name.

Of course, the film’s marketing hasn’t even begun.  Once people see some images and hear some songs, things may change, but if I were to gauge public sentiment towards Wonka right now, I would say it looks pretty unfavorable for the movie.  Critics seem more optimistic than the general public, but that’s mainly because Paul King is well known among critics but not so much among Joe Public.

However, Wonka can overcome this because Charlie and the Chocolate Factory overcame this.  Charlie faced a great deal of hostility prior to its release, from people refusing to give the movie a chance because they held the 1971 film in high regard.  Tim Burton himself commented on this in June 2005: “The way people talk, it’s like we’re taking copies of the cold movie and burning them so no one can ever see them again.”  And despite the die-hard 1971 fans who refused to watch any Willy Wonka that wasn’t Gene Wilder, Charlie went on to become the 58th highest-grossing-film of all time at it’s time of release, and a whole generation of children grew up with it and consider it their preferred version of the tale.  I’ve never been so proud.

Wonka has the ability to do just this, become a hit and become the preferred version of story for a generation of children, and piss a bunch of people who grew up on the previous two adaptations (although I hope 2005 fans are more keen to welcome it into the Wonka family).

The quality of the movie itself

Yeah, my final point is that Wonka’s box office performance will be impacted by just how good it is.  The public isn’t particularly looking forward to another Willy Wonka movie, but if they hear it’s really good, like really good, then people will flock towards it.  This is comparable to Top Gun earlier this year.  To me, it seemed like there was absolutely no hype for this movie whatsoever, but it gained popularity just because of how good it was (haven't seen it so I can’t confirm this).  I knew people who went and saw it without seeing the first Top Gun.

Paul King obviously has a great track record with family films, with his Paddington movies averaging at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes—compare this to Willy Wonka’s 91% and Charlie’s 83%.  This alone shows that King is capable of making a Willy Wonka film is not only good, but that could unseat both versions as being the definitive Willy Wonka film, as both Charlie and Willy Wonka have their own problems: the 1971 film being dated in several areas and having some serious pacing issues, and the 2005 film exploring Wonka’s upbringing in a polarizing way.

However, it’s also possible that the movie FUCKING SUCKS!!!1!!!  I’ll use Tim Burton as an example: he had a nearly flawless filmography in the 1980s and 1990s.  Honestly, try to find a bad film among the following: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow.  And then in 2001 he did Planet of the Apes, which was not only his worst movie at the time, but a frequent contender for worst movie of the year and won the Razzie for Worst Remake.  Thankfully, Burton redeemed himself immediately after with four consecutive bangers: Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, and Sweeney Todd.

(This may be a bad example because Planet of the Apes was still the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2001, and therefore it’s negative reception didn’t affect it’s box office gross...)

It’s difficult to assess Paul King overall as a director, because while he’s done arguably the two most acclaimed family films of the 21st century, he hasn’t really done anything outside of the Paddington films to further prove his filmmaking prowess.  He did a movie in 2009 called Bunny and the Bull, which has a 6.6 on IMDB, a 3.3/5 on Letterboxd, a 67% critics score and a 65% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes—every metric indicating that it’s pretty decent but nowhere near Paddington.

The soundtrack alone could be enough to boost Wonka to become a hit, considering the previous two films have fantastic soundtracks.  The (Academy Award-nominated) 1971 soundtrack has since become ingrained into pop culture, and the (Grammy-nominated) 2005 soundtrack has some of Danny Elfman’s best compositions.  The 2023 film’s music will be composed by Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy.  I’d be lying if I said I’ve ever heard any of his stuff, but he’s a more inspired choice than your usual Hans Zimmer or Alexandre Desplat or whoever (I don’t know who the go-to-guy for musicals would be).

So will Wonka beat Charlie at the box office?

Looking at all the facts, Wonka faces an uphill challenge.  Ultimately, no, I do not believe that Wonka will make more money than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I expect Wonka to have a lower budget, so there’s a good chance that it will be more profitable than Charlie, but I’m anticipating that Wonka ends up somewhere in the $300–$400 million range.

I do think that Wonka will be the second-highest grossing Roald Dahl film and the second exception to the Roald Dahl curse.  And I just think to myself, if Mary Poppins Returns (a movie truly no-one was asking for) could make $350 million in 2019, then Wonka could do just as much.  And the Willy Wonka property is far more relevant and in-demand than Mary Poppins.  So here it is:

Wonka (2023): Prediction as of December 4, 2022

Worldwide gross: $350 million

Rotten Tomatoes: 84% critics, 68% audience

Trust me, I want this movie to do well.  Peter Ostrum, the original Charlie Bucket, said something absolutely true, that any Wonka project reignites interest in all the other Wonka projects.  So yeah, I’d love to see Wonka do well and there be a huge surge in popularity for the other two movies.

Here are some excerpts of the complaint filed by Village Roadshow.

Basically, Village Roadshow is alleging that WB did not give them an option to participate in the release of Wonka, even though they co-own the rights to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

WB’s defense was to claim that Wonka is an entirely different story from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and in doing so unveiled some of the details of Wonka:

Charlie is on Netflix, but I had no real intention of watching it.  I own six copies of the film on DVD and Blu-ray and if I were to watch it I’d likely watch it on Blu-ray.  But earlier today, I was watching Nickflix’s reaction to the movie.  I always like watching people’s first time reactions to movies I like.  But in watching him watch the movie, I noticed something strange... Theobald Film Productions received a credit in the opening credits.

This is... incredibly odd.  I checked the DVD version of the film, Theobald does not have a credit in the opening credits.  I checked the Blu-ray version of the film, which has those deleted scenes edited into the movie.  Same thing, Theobald is absent from the opening credits.  I checked the Chinese Blu-ray I own, same thing.  When the movie aired on Freeform last October, same thing.  And lastly, I checked the version of the movie that is currently on HBO Max.  Same thing.  The version of the film on Netflix is the only version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that I can find where Theobald is given an opening credit.

So, this is weird.  It adds more to the mystery of what exactly Theobald is and why, 17 years after Charlie’s release (and less than a year after Theobald’s apparent dissolution), it has it’s name inserted into the opening credits.

But then I had a thought, and this is possibly just wishful thinking.  For Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’s 4K release back in June, it had the Paramount logo inserted into the beginning.  And as I was skipping through the version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Netflix, I don’t know if I was just going crazy and seeing it, but it looked better than I remembered.  What if Warner Bros. upgraded Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for a 4K release later this year, and the version they’ve given Netflix is some 1080p version of that 4K scan?  And since they were updating the film and had access to the editing of the film, they put Theobald in the opening credits (for some reason).  There is precedent for 4K or upgraded versions of movies going to streaming platforms before physical media.

Now this might just be me wishful thinking because I would love to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory come to 4K.  And the version on Netflix didn’t look TOO much better than the other versions available.  But I’m confused by all of this, and it is one major coincidence that five days after my Theobald post, this version comes to life (although I probably would never have looked out for it before).