The Correct Order To Watch Every Willy Wonka Movie
Roald Dahl's novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was first published in 1963, and has been a perennial classroom favorite ever since. The story tells the tale of an impoverished, Dickensian moppet named Charlie who wins a sweepstakes held by the chocolate factory in his town. The chocolate factory, overseen by an eccentric recluse named Willy Wonka, produced sweets with eerie, magical powers; multi-flavored chewing gum caused its chewer to expand into a massive blueberry. That sort of thing. Of all the children who won Willy Wonka's sweepstakes, only Charlie survived the tour. Well, the other kids survived, but definitely the worse for wear.
Dahl's book was first adapted to a feature film in 1971, but that was only the first adaptation of many. The BBC adapted the book into a radio drama in 1983, and ZX Spectrum adapted it into a video game in 1985. There was a second video game in 2005, paired with a theme park attraction at Alton Towers in Staffordshire, UK. In 2010, an opera based on "Charlie," called "The Golden Ticket," debuted in St. Louis, Missouri, while a 2013 stage musical debuted at the Royal Theater in the West End. This is all in addition to t-shirts, slot machines, and actual Wonka candy products. Dahl's story has been milked into a legitimate pop culture phenomenon.
Apart from the above-mentioned 1971 film, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" has also been adapted into three additional feature films, with the latest still playing in theaters at the moment of this writing. Something about Dahl's story has remained persistent, and there is now a panoply of Wonka-adjacent cinema to enjoy (or endure, depending on your taste).
Here they are.
The release order
The Wonka movies that have been released to date:
- Mel Stuart's "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (1971)
- Tim Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2003)
- Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's "Epic Movie" (2007)
- Spike Brandt's "Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (2017)
- Paul King's "Wonka" (2023)
Dahl famously hated the 1971 adaptation of his book, which sidelined Charlie, changing the title and the focus to Willy Wonka, played in the film by Gene Wilder. He later disowned the film, feeling it was just too far from the source material. It took many years, but thanks to the gods of VHS, Stuart's film became deeply beloved by a generation of children, with many citing Wilder's manic performance and the film's nightmarish qualities to be deeply, weirdly appealing.
According to an article in Variety, the film rights to "Charlie" were sold to Warner Bros. in 1998, eight years after Dahl's death. The remake stayed on the back burner for years before Tim Burton was brought on board. Burton's adaptation isn't widely beloved, but it was a big hit. Johnny Depp played Willy Wonka as a cross between Michael Jackson and Carol Channing.
Crispin Glover played Willy Wonka in the abysmal 2007 spoof flick "Epic Movie." It's bad, but Willy Wonka appears on screen, so it counts. The animated straight-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry was a bizarre Rosencrantz & Guildenstern-like repurposing of Stuart's film, telling the same story from the perspective of the titular cat and mouse as they lurked in the shadows.
The new film "Wonka" is a prequel to Stuart's film, and stars Timothée Chalamet as the mad chocolatier. The new film is colorful and fun, although lacks the weird bitterness that made the original so appealing.