The Hollywood Reporter reported yesterday that Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. is about to hire Paul King, director of the critically acclaimed Paddington movies, to direct their would-be Willy Wonka reboot. For folks who loved Paddington 2 (i.e. – everyone), this is a case of a project getting that much more exciting no matter how much or how little one might have desired a would-be Willy Wonka origin story. What’s interesting is that Warner Bros. may be building a new brand by riding on the critical coattails of a movie that A) wasn’t a domestic hit and B) was a last-minute acquisition.
The other big note in the Hollywood Reporter article is that WB is planning on doing a “creative revamp” of their kid-friendly properties. They’ve got a script from Guillermo del Toro for a remake of The Witches and they just made a deal with the Dr. Seuss estate to make a new Cat in the Hat movie as well as other Suess-based movies. To be fair, you can’t do much worse than the infamously terrible Mike Myers-starring Cat in the Hat from late 2003. Although Willy Wonka and The Witches are properties that arguably got it right the first time.
Heck, I’m the guy who defends Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as it’s fine on its own merits and is different enough from the 1971 Gene Wilder classic to justify itself. Of course, we should also remember that the massively successful 2005 remake/re-adaptation was partially a product of that film being one of the very biggest releases that summer, as well as featuring the now cliché director/star team-up in the prime of their popularity. Point being, the $206m domestic/$475m worldwide gross wasn’t just because folks really liked the property.
Truth be told, there may be value in a series of prestigious, artistically superior re-adaptations of classic kid-friendly properties. Provided that the movies are A) good, B) different from their predecessors and C) budgeted closer to Paddington 2 than Pan, then there is a potential for cross-generational interest and potentially multi-generational nostalgia. With outright adult movies something of a coin toss now that at-home options (Netflix, HBO, VOD, etc.) have supplanted theatrical studio programmers as the adult entertainment option of choice, one answer may be high-toned kids flicks with an explicit adult appeal.
If Warner Bros. wants to take a shot at making such pictures into “that thing we do,” then, by all means, go for it. But it will be highly ironic if they end up forming a new quasi-franchise/brand from a movie that they grabbed at the last minute and didn’t even crack $40 million at the domestic box office. They just have to resist the urge to chase Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-level grosses. Oh, and they really have to resist the urge to put Paddington, the Cat in the Hat, Willy Wonka and the rest into an interconnected cinematic universe.
