Recent Academy Award winner Taika Waititi has just been added to a new Netflix project to direct a new animated version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Originally a book by British author Roald Dahl published in 1964, it tells the story of an eccentric chocolate factory owner in search of his heir by inviting children to his factory inhabited by his workers, the Oompa-Loompas. It has previously been adapted to film and television most famously in the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with Gene Wilder portraying Wonka, and also by Tim Burton in 2005 starring Johnny Depp and Christopher Lee as Willy Wonka’s dentist father, Wilbur, with other versions throughout the years as well.
Waititi, whose most recent project, Jojo Rabbit, won him an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, has been a rising star in Hollywood in the past years, directing prestigious projects such as Thor: Ragnarok, the finale of of The Mandalorian‘s first season, and of course the upcoming fourth Thor movie, Thor: Love and Thunder. He will not only be directing but also writing and producing a two-part animated series based on the Dahl book according to reports from HollywoodReporter. It is clear why Waititi was chosen for this project, his creativity, humor, and joy that seeps through all his work will be capturing the true essence of Dahl’s stories.
There has been no further information from Netflix on voice actors or a timeframe for the project yet.