Despite mixed reviews before its premiere on Friday, the new Warner Brothers release “Wonka” performed well at the box office over its opening weekend, bringing in $39 million.
The fantasy musical stars Timothée Chalamet as the titular star. “Wonka” is based on the 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl. That book was made into a movie, “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” in 1971 and was later remade in 2005 with Johnny Depp playing Wonka.
This newest film version is a little different because it explores the origin story of Willy Wonka and serves as a prequel to the original film.
“Wonka” cost $125 million to make. Industry insiders consider the weekend’s box office results promising as films released in December tend to keep performing well during the holiday season.
“‘Wonka’ has the right tone for the holidays and momentum is very good,” David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, told Variety. “Critics’ reviews and audience scores are strong, and the genre performs well overseas.”
The movie currently has an 84% critics score and 91% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
“A breezy two-hour musical comedy that hopes to make the audience shed a sentimental tear or two, but is mainly content to amuse, delight, and inspire cheers when the bad guys are defeated,” the reviewer at RogerEbert.com wrote.
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ChristianityToday called it “unabashedly an old-fashioned musical, devoid of cynicism, and unfailingly optimistic.”
Audiences were delighted as well. “What a pleasant surprise! A prequel worthy of the original,” one person wrote. “Outstanding performance by Timothee Chalamet. Excellent cast and musical numbers. An exceedingly great movie treat.”
Another agreed, “Timothee is the perfect young Willy Wonka!”
Chalamet had previously discussed what convinced him to participate in the film after his initial hesitation.
“Like many people, when there are remakes, I feel very protective over the original character and versions you love,” Chalamet said during an interview with GamesRadar+. “Your eyebrows go up with skepticism about [whether] this is a legitimate, worthwhile story or a cynical money grab.”
The actor said it was the film’s opening musical number that changed his mind.
“The song ‘Hat Full of Dreams’ was in there,” he said. “And there was no music to accompany it, but the lyrics were so clever. [It’s] about this young Willy, who was definitively not the crazy, cynical, kind of jaded, brain-fried version that we see in the two prior films but was very hopeful, young, ambitious, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer, maybe a little naive. I think that’s very clever.”
“Wonka” is currently showing in theaters nationwide.