What to Watch Next If You Liked Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

According to the number crunchers, over 80 million Easter eggs are consumed in the UK each spring. To help give you sweet dreams, the latest entry in Cinema Paradiso's What to Watch Next series is Mel Stuart's 1971 musical Roald Dahl adaptation, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

A century ago, the eight year-old Roald Dahl participated in 'the Great Mouse Plot of 1924', when he and four friends put a dead rodent in a jar of gobstoppers in the Llandaff sweet shop owned by the loathed Mrs Pratchett (who insisted on watching when the boys were caned by the headmaster of the Cathedral School). Four decades later, the same sweet featured in Dahl's fourth novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as proprietor Willy Wonka strove to create an Everlasting Gobstopper.

The idea for the factory was rooted in another childhood memory. At the age of 13, Dahl started boarding at Repton School, which had an arrangement with the Cadbury plant at Bournville. Each year, the boys would receive a box containing a dozen chocolate bars in plain wrappers, which they would be asked to rate. The task convinced Dahl that Cadbury must have 'an inventing room, a secret place where fully-grown men and women in white overalls spent all their time playing around with sticky, boiling messes, sugar and chocs, and mixing them up and trying to invent something new and fantastic'.

Despite already having a lively imagination, Dahl didn't strike one of his English teachers as author material, as he commented on one report card: 'I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended.' But Dahl did go on to become one of the most influential children's writers of the 20th century, with the background to the writing of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being outlined in John Hay's To Olivia (2021), which explores how Dahl (Hugh Bonneville) and actress wife, Patricia Neal (Keeley Hawes), reacted to the devastating death of their young daughter (Darcey Ewart).

A Troublesome Text

How different things might have been had Walt Disney gone ahead with the film he had planned from Roald Dahl's first children's book, The Gremlins (1943). However, Dahl and Neal decided to leave the United States in 1960 and set up home at Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. It was here that he wrote James and the Giant Peach (1961), which would be filmed by Henry Selick in 1996. Future films would follow from Fantastic Mr Fox (1970/2009), Danny: The Champion of the World (1975/1989), 'The BFG' (1982/ 1989 & 2016 ), 'The Witches' (1983/ 1990 & 2020 ), and 'Matilda' (1988/ 1996 & 2022 ). But Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory would exert the strongest grip on the imagination of children and film-makers alike.

The trouble was, the text was riddled with ideas that were already problematic when Dahl first wrote about them. The screenplay for Mel Stuart's 1971 film retained the discussions of bad parents, over-indulged children, gum-chewing, the detrimental nature of television, and greed. But the issue of Wonka's business practices and the exploitation of his workforce had to be tackled.

In Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972), Dahl revealed that Grandpa Joe had worked at the factory before Wonka had closed it down because spies hired by his rivals kept infiltrating the staff. The poverty of the Bucket family, therefore, stems from this decision and Wonka's plan to eradicate the threat of espionage by exclusively hiring Oompa Loompas to produce his chocolate.

This raises further problems, however, as the 1964 book describes the Oompa Loompas as 'African pygmies' who were smuggled to the factory (which some have seen as a glorified sugar plantation) in crates. This detail carries connotations of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the fact that the Oompa Loompas never leave the factory and are only paid in cocoa beans reinforces an association that smacks of the racial prejudice that many migrants from the Caribbean and other parts of the Commonwealth would have felt in mid-1960s Britain. Moreover, there is something of the White Saviour Complex about Wonka's offer for the Oompa Loompas to leave behind the 'desolate wastes and fierce beasts' of Loompa Land: 'Come and live with me in peace and safety, away from all the Wangdoodles, and Hornswogglers, and Snozzwangers, and rotten, Vermicious Knids.'

Consequently, on hearing about the film adaptation, the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

raised the unsuitabiliy of the pygmy reference against the backdrop of the ongoing struggle for Civil Rights. Not wishing to alienate potential customers in America's newly integrated cinemas, the producers responded by giving the Oompa Loompas orange skin and green hair. Indeed, Dahl himself amended the text for a 1973 revision to depict the Oompa Loompas as a people akin to hippies, with 'rosy-white' skin and 'golden-brown hair'.

The illustrations were also redrawn to reflect this change of heart. But, when Tim Burton made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), he cast Indian-Kenyan actor Deep Roy as all 165 Oompa Loompas (including the sole female, Doris), which sparked a debate about the colour of the actor's skin and the fact that so many American jobs were being outsourced to the Subcontinent in an age of new technology. In making his origin story, Wonka (2023), director Paul King opted to return to Stuart's orange/green look. However, he was accused in some quarters of having whitewashed the text without addressing the central master-slave dilemma. Furthermore, he ran into problems of his own, with a number of actors with dwarfism criticising the casting of Hugh Grant, who was reduced to 20cm on screen using computer-generated imagery.

The impetus to make the 1971 film came from Mel Stuart's 10 year-old daughter, Madeline. She loved Dahl's book and begged her father to make a movie with producer David L. Wolper, whom Madeline called Uncle Dave. As Wolper was in talks with the Quaker Oats Company about a vehicle to launch a new candy bar from its Chicago-based subsidiary, Breaker Confections, he jumped at the idea. So did Quaker, who agreed to put up a proportion of the budget in return for being able to use the brand name, 'Wonka Bar'.

Although he had directed the comedy, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969), Stuart was best known for documentaries like Four Days in November (1964), which examined the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In addition to producing this, Wolper had also received an Oscar nomination for The Race For Space (1959) and would go on to win Best Documentary Feature with The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), an intimate study of insects that was directed by Ed Spiegel and Walon Green. The latter would get an uncredited cameo in Willy Wonka, as it's his face that the millipede crawls across in the psychedelic tunnel scene.

As Dahl had scripted Ken Hughes's hugely popular take on Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1969), Wolper and Stuart asked him to adapt his own book. When the screenplay arrived, however, it was incomplete and felt more like a treatment that pointed out which parts of the text should be followed verbatim. Deeply dissatisfied, Wolper hired David Seltzer, who had worked on The Hellstrom Chronicle and was willing to forego a credit in order to keep Dahl's name on the finished film. Robert Kaufman would also pen a couple of sketches for the search for the Golden Ticket segment that took up the first half of the film.

Dahl disliked Seltzer's changes, the most notable of which was the shift of emphasis away from Charlie Bucket and on to Willy Wonka. He also turned the minor character Slugworth into a more sinister rival, while also adding the Fizzy Lifting Drinks scene to show that Charlie Bucket wasn't as perfect as he had been presented on the page. Seltzer also gave Wonka the habit of quoting from great works of literature, including the Bible, John Keats's 'Endymion: A Poetic Romance', Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', William Allingham's 'Homeward Bound', Arthur O'Shaughnessy's 'Ode', John Masefield 'Sea Fever', Ogden Nash's 'Reflections on Ice Breaking', Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest', and William Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice', 'Romeo and Juliet', and 'As You Like It'. The latter four titles have all been adapted for the screen and are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. Paste the titles into the Searchline to assess your options.

Wolper was keen to make a musical and approached legendary composers Richard Rodgers and Henry Mancini about writing the score. However, he signed up the British songwriting duo of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. The former had co-written the theme songs for Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger (1964) and Lewis Gilbert's You Only Live Twice (1967), as well as the musicals Doctor Dolittle (Richard Fleischer, 1967), Goodbye, Mr Chips (Herbert Ross, 1969), and Scrooge (Ronald Neame, 1970). Newley was a prolific actor and singer, whose screen credits dated back to 1944 and included John Gilling's pop satire, Idol on Parade (1959).

Unfortunately, Dahl didn't like the music any more than he did the scenario. But, as we'll see below, the entire project seemed to needle him (even though he did rather well out of it). First, however, we need to remind ourselves of the storyline.

So Much Time and So Little to Do

After school is over, Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) delivers newspapers while his classmates go to the sweet shop run by Bill (Aubrey Woods), who sings to his customers about 'The Candy Man'. Charlie lives with his mother (Diana Sowle), and four bedridden grandparents: Grandpa George (Ernst Ziegler), Grandma Georgina (Dora Altmann), Grandma Josephine (Franziska Liebing), and Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson). Times are hard, but Charlie doesn't mind helping out his laundress mother by buying bread and giving Grandpa Joe some tobacco money.

Charlie is obsessed with the Wonka chocolate factory and is spooked when a tinker (Peter Capell) greets him at the locked gate and wonders who makes the sweets because he's never seen anyone go in or come out. The next day, Charlie is helping Mr Turkentine (David Battley) in a chemistry lesson when Winkelmann (Peter Stuart) interrupts to announce that Willy Wonka has hidden five Golden Tickets inside a consignment of Wonka Bars to offer the lucky winners a tour of the factory and a lifetime's supply of chocolate.

Naturally, Charlie is swept up in the ensuing frenzy, as TV news bulletins report on the worldwide search for the Golden Tickets. The first two are found in Germany and Britain, while the next pair are claimed by kids in America. Much to Charlie's chagrin, the Wonka Bar he buys contains only chocolate and the same goes for the one Grandpa Joe purchases with his tobacco money. Mrs Bucket sings 'Cheer Up, Charlie', as he tries to put a brave face on things, as he wants to visit the Wonka factory more than anything in the world.

All seems to be lost when a gambler from Paraguay claims to have the fifth ticket. But he turns out to be a hoaxer and Charlie is overwhelmed when he sees a glint of gold inside the bar he had bought with a coin he had found in a gutter. Running all the way home - pausing only when a rival chocolatier named Slugworth (Günter Meisner) blocks his path and offers him a fortune if he can steal one of Willy Wonka's new Everlasting Gobstoppers - Charlie shows the Golden Ticket to his family and invites Grandpa Joe to be his plus one on the day of the tour. Clambering out of bed for the first time in 20 years, he joins his grandson in a rousing rendition of ' (I've Got a) Golden Ticket'.

Outside the gates, Charlie and Grandpa Joe wait with Augustus (Michael Böllner) and Mrs Gloop (Ursula Reit), Veruca (Julie Dawn Cole) and Mr Salt (Roy Kinnear), Violette (Denise Nickerson) and Mr Beauregarde (Leonard Stone), and Mike (Paris Themmen) and Mrs Teevee (Nora Denney). Suddenly, a door opens and Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) hobbles out, limping on a cane. Silence descends, as he shuffles across a carpet covering the courtyard, before he executes a perfect forward roll to wild applause.

Collecting the tickets, Wonka quickly deduces that Augustus is avaricious, Veruca is spoilt, Violet is gum-chewingly vacuous, and Mike is telly-addled. But he takes an instant shine to Charlie and ushers his guests into the factory, where he makes them all sign a contract before guiding them into the Chocolate Room. He encourages them to apply 'Pure Imagination' throughout their stay and looks on benevolently, as the five children and their guardians sample the delights of his candy-coloured wonderland.

While lapping from the chocolate river, Augustus falls in and Mrs Gloop totters off in search of her son after he shoots through a series of pipes. Reinforcing Wonka's warnings about sticking to the rules, the Oompa Loompas who operate the factory sing a cautionary ditty that is accompanied on screen by the lyrics. But the visitors have no time to ponder Augustus's disappearance, as their host bundles them aboard his sailing boat, SS Wonkatania, for a disconcerting voyage through a scary tunnel.

Violet is the next to transgress, as she gobbles some three-course gum and turns into a giant blueberry. She has to be rolled away by the Oompa Loompas, but Veruca and her father disappear down a chute in a room filled with large geese laying golden eggs. Unable to resist, Mike finds himself shrunken down and stuck in the Wonkavision tele-screen. But Charlie has also had a moment of weakness in the Fizzy Lifting Drinks room and he and Grandpa Joe had only avoided a collision with some ceiling fan blades by discovering in the nick of time that burping brings them back down to earth. As he sees everything, however, Wonka knows that he has broken the contract and angrily orders him to leave.

Grandpa Joe consoles the boy that he can always sell the Everlasting Gobstopper to Slugworth. But Charlie is a good boy at heart and he places the sweet on Wonka's desk before taking his leave. This act of decency saves the day, however, and Wonka calls Charlie back to introduce him to Slugworth, who is actually on the payroll. Wonka confides that he had hoped Charlie would win and leads the pair into the Wonkavator for the ride of a lifetime. As the multi-directional glass capsule lifts off through the roof, it floats above the town and Wonka informs Charlie that he is giving him the factory so that it stays in good hands. He will teach him the secrets of the trade and welcome the entire family into his home. Charlie is speechless, but Wonka reminds him, 'Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted. He lived happily ever after.'

Making the Magic Happen

Roald Dahl was adamant that his friend, Spike Milligan, should play Willy Wonka. Fellow Goon Peter Sellers also fancied the part, as did the various members of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74). They included 'The Whizzo Chocolate Assortment' sketch in Ian MacNaughton's And Now For Something Completely Different (1971), while Eric Idle eventually got to record an audiobook of Dahl's classic. But the Pythons were little known Stateside in 1970, which also surely counted against the Carry On duo of Sidney James and Kenneth Williams, who were also supposedly considered for Wonka alongside Jon Pertwee (who had just started his stint in Doctor Who, 1963-), Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Michael Crawford, and Frankie Howerd, who was busy making Bob Kellett's Up Pompeii (1971).

Fresh from his triumph as Fagin in Carol Reed's Best Picture winner, Oliver! (1968), Ron Moody was mentioned as a potential Wonka, while Joel Grey had to move on to play the Master of Ceremonies in Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972) after Stuart decided the 5ft 5in actor was insufficiently imposing to play the flamboyant chocolatier. At 72, the great Fred Astaire was deemed too old. So, Wolper and Stuart held a casting session at the Plaza Hotel in New York and were beginning to despair after a week of auditions when Gene Wilder walked in.

'His inflection was perfect,' Stuart later recalled. 'He had the sardonic, demonic edge that we were looking for.' Wolper concurred that 'the role fit him tighter than one of Jacques Cousteau's wetsuits'. But he still tried to stop Stuart from rushing into the corridor to offer Wilder the part, as they hadn't discussed fees. Even then, the actor made a potentially deal-breaking demand.

'When I make my first entrance,' he told Stuart, 'I'd like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I'm walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.' When the director asked why he insisted on this bit of business, Wilder replied, 'From that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth.'

The actor's grasp of Wonka's character extended to his costume. He insisted on tan trousers rather than green to match his purple velvet jacket (to which he added a pair of large pockets), while he declared, 'The hat is terrific, but making it two inches shorter would make it more special.' Once on the set, Wilder would sometimes rehearse a scene in one tone of voice and then change when the camera rolled to ensure that the reactions of his co-stars (most notably in the climactic office scene) would be genuine.

As for the rest of the cast, Jim Backus (the voice of Mr Magoo) was considered for Sam Beauregarde, while Jean Stapleton rejected the part of Mrs Teevee to focus on playing Edith Bunker in the new sitcom, All in the Family (1971-79). Rat Pack member Sammy Davis, Jr. was desperate to play Bill, the sweet shop owner, and later had a huge hit with his song, 'The Candy Man'. By a quirk of fate, Jack Albertson had co-starred with Dahl's wife. Patricia Neal, in Ulu Grosbard's The Subject Was Roses (1968), and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, pipping Gene Wilder for his turn as Leo Bloom in Mel Brooks's The Producers (1967).

Child actors Julie Dawn Cole, Denise Nickerson, Peter Ostrum, and Paris Themmen, had varying degrees of acting experience, but Stuart had spotted Michael Böllner while scouting locations in Munich. The last to be cast, however, was Ostrum, who was plucked from the children's section of the Cleveland Playhouse in Ohio just 10 days before shooting commenced.

Familiar faces like Tim Brooke-Taylor from The Goodies (1970-80) didn't make the closing credits. Neither did the one woman and nine men (hailing from Britain, Iran, Malta, Turkey, France, and West Germany) who played the Oompa Loompas. But Cinema Paradiso is more than happy to namecheck Pepe Poupee and her colleagues, Rudy Borgstaller, George Claydon, Malcolm Dixon, Rusty Goffe, Ismed Hassan, Norman McGlen, Angelo Muscat, Marcus Powell, and Albert Wilkinson.

Cole and Nickerson became good friends during the shoot and would dance to records by David Cassidy and The Carpenters in their hotel room. They also later admitted to crushes on Ostrum and Themmen, who irritated Wilder with his brattish pranks, although one backfired when he let loose the wasps that were standing in for the bees on the three-course gum machine and got stung. Years later, Cole would claim that Dahl was scary, while Stuart was 'quite terrifying, quite intimidating, quite yell-y'. Yet, when she filmed 'I Want It Now' on her 13th birthday, the director gave her some props are souvenirs and arranged for the on-set photographer to take some special colour photographs to mark the occasion after the sequence had required 36 takes.

Production ran from 31 August to 19 November 1970, with location shooting taking the company to a chocolate factory in Spain and the Guinness brewery in Dublin. The exterior of the Wonka premises was provided by a gasworks in Munich, while Nördlingen stood in as the town over which the Wonkavator flies during the finale. The eye-catching sets designed by Harper Goff, however, were housed at the Bavaria Studios, where a little budget was made to go a long way.

The Wonka Bars were wrapped blocks of wood, while the walnut-shelling squirrels from the book were replaced with egg-laying geese, who were easier to train and photograph. Many of the devices in the Inventing Room were cobbled from discarded items salvaged from the scrapyards of Munich, while Stuart asked Goff to saw the props in Wonka's office in half so that they seemed eccentrically in keeping with his personality. He later revealed, 'I couldn't face the thought of ending the journey through this fabulous factory in an ordinary-looking office.'

Stuart also gave orders for the juveniles to be kept away from the Chocolate Room and the spooky tunnel, as he wanted their reactions to be authentic. But not everything was irresistibly delicious. As Themmen recalled, 'The river was made of water with food colouring. At one point, they poured some cocoa powder into it to try to thicken it but it didn't really work.' Indeed, the ingredients had started to curdle by the time Böllner tumbled into what he called 'dirty, stinking water' and a combination of chemicals and salt conditioner was used to suppress the odour.

Only the ears of the giant gummy bears were edible, while the tea cup that Wonka bites into was made of wax. The wallpaper wasn't flavoured, either, but the giant mushrooms were stuffed with whipped cream, while the leaves on the trees were marzipan. Similarly, the large watermelon was filled with chocolate, but Cole didn't have a particularly sweet tooth and didn't enjoy shovelling handfuls into her mouth.

As the shoot overran, Bob Fosse had to delay the start of Cabaret and kept calling round to check on Stuart's progress. He might have saved some time by dropping a scene in which an English explorer scales a high mountain in order to consult a wise guru, only to be asked if he has a Wonka Bar. On failing to find a Golden Ticket, the hermit sighs, 'Life is a disappointment!' But, as Stuart recalled in his book, Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, he was dismayed when the scene was cut after falling flat in test screenings. When he showed the footage to a psychologist friend to discover why it had not raised a laugh, he had been informed, 'You don't understand, Mel. For a great many people, life is a disappointment.'

Wonka Ever After

'Disappoinment' didn't come close to describing Dahl's attitude towards the film. Despite stills of him looking cheerful on the set, he deeply resented the Seltzer rewrites and the snubbing of Spike Milligan. He also dismissed the songs as 'saccharine, sappy and sentimental' and grumbled that the picture 'placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie'. Indeed, he was so 'infuriated' that he refused to sell the rights to Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, while lawyers ensured that Seltzer's original sequel premise got no further than his notebook.

Having devoted so much time to the search for the Golden Tickets, Stuart felt that focus in the second half should fall on Willy Wonka to make good on both the aura surrounding him and the excitement generated by the prospect of a visit to his factory. However, he had also been advised that mentioning Wonka rather than Charlie in the title would avoid any controversy over the term, 'Mr Charlie', which was current in African American communities as a pejorative nickname for any white man in power.

The name had also acquired a new meaning during the Vietnam War, as 'Victor Charlie' was radio code for the 'Viet Cong'. But Wolper later claimed that he had decided on the title for branding reasons, as it would make viewers think of the Wonka Bars being marketed by Quaker.

Paramount Pictures released Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory on 30 June 1971. The reviews were mixed, with The New York Times complaining that it was 'tedious and stagy with little sparkle and precious little humour'. The Hollywood Reporter opined that 'a pleasanter, more captivating musical for children this year is difficult to conceive', while Monthly Film Bulletin declared it 'an unqualified delight - one of those rare, genuinely imaginative children's entertainments at which no adult need be embarrassed to be seen'. The esteemed Roger Ebert went further. 'Probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz, ' he wrote. 'It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren't: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination. Willy Wonka is such a surely and wonderfully spun fantasy that it works on all kinds of minds, and it is fascinating because, like all classic fantasy, it is fascinated with itself.'

Despite Wilder landing a Golden Globe nomination and a brace of Academy Award nods for the songtrack and Walter Scharf's score, the public remained unconvinced, with the film only making $4 million on its $3 million budget. For three years, it was largely forgotten. But, like so many sleeper hits before and since, it started to attract a following after premiering on television on Thanksgiving night in November 1974. Even then, Paramount had such little faith in the picture that it allowed the distribution rights to revert back to Quaker in 1977. As they no longer had any interest in movies and with Wonka Bars a thing of the past, they sold the package to Warner Bros for $500,000.

In 1984, however, Willy Wonka was released on videotape and its reputation began to grow. After a 25th anniversary cinematic revival raked in $21 million, standard and widescreen versions were offered with the 1996 DVD release. The print was remastered five years later, with the surviving cast members reuniting for the 'making of' documentary, Pure Imagination: The Story of 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory'. More recently, Blu-ray and 4K editions have arrived, with the latter marking the 50th anniversary in 2021. As you might expect, all three formats are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso.

As we saw in The Instant Expert's Guide to Mel Brooks, Wilder went on to star in Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (both 1974) before forging a popular partnership with Richard Pryor on Arthur Hiller's Silver Streak (1976) and See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), Sidney Poitier's Stir Crazy (1980), and Maurice Phillips's Another You (1991). He also co-starred with wife Gilda Radner in Poitier's Hanky Panky (1982) and Wilder's The Woman in Red (1984) and Haunted Honeymoon (1986) before her untimely death in 1989 at the age of 42.

Even though it grossed $475 million, Wilder had no time for Tim Burton's 2005 adaptation, which he considered 'an insult'. It was headlined by Johnny Depp after industry rumours had linked Nicolas Cage, John C. Reilly, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, and Christopher Walken with the role. But Wilder didn't live to see either Spike Brandt's Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (2017) or Paul King's Wonka (2023). Unfortunately, Denise Nickerson is no longer with us, either. Ironically, given that Seltzer went on to script Richard Donner's The Omen (1976), she auditioned for the role of Regan in William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), but lost out to Linda Blair. After a handful of TV gigs, she quit acting at the age of 21 and worked as a doctor's receptionist until her death in 2019.

Never acting again, Peter Ostrum became a vet, while Michael Böllner served as a tax accountant. Paris Themmen went into real estate before following a spell as a casting director by founding The Wonka Shop to sell memorabilia relating to the film. Only Julie Dawn Cole stayed in show business, playing the snooty Arabella in the Wendy Craig sitcom, ...And Mother Makes Three (1971-73). Guest appearances followed in Orson Welles's Great Mysteries (1973-74) and Within These Walls (1974-78) before Cole spent three years as student nurse Jo Longhurst in Angels (1975-83). Resorting to bad girl type, she enjoyed a romp with brother-in-law Christopher Biggins as Rowella Chynoweth in Poldark (1975-77) before cropping up in such sitcoms as Rings on Their Fingers (1975-80), Up the Elephant and Round the Castle (1983-85), Terry and June (1979-87), and Tandoori Nights (1985-87). Cole even reunited with Roald Dahl in 'The Skeleton Key', an episode of Tales of the Unexpected (1979-88). She stopped acting in 2011 and retrained as a psychotherapist.

The film has been homaged and parodied several times on television, notably as 'Trash of the Titans' in The Simpsons (1989-), 'Fry and the Slurm Factory' in Futurama (1999-2013), 'Le Petit Tourette' in South Park (1997-), and 'Jeff and the Dank Ass Weed Factory' in American Dad (2005-17). The best, however, saw Peter Griffin and Brian taking a tour of Pawtucket Pat's brewery in the 2000 'Wasted Talent' episode of Family Guy (1999-).

Ryan Gosling, Donald Glover, and Tom Holland were supposedly shortlisted before Timothée Chalamet was chosen for Wonka by Paul King, the director of Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017). Chalamet received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance, while the feature lost out to Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest for the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film. Aware of material that Dahl left behind, King hopes to return to the topic soon for, as he told one interviewer, 'There's an awful lot more Wonka story that we have that we would like to tell.'