Tim Burton to direct Willy Wonka remake for WB (1 Viewer)

[Scott Weinberg]

Got this news from Variety .

This news surprise ANYONE?

 

[MatS]

nope, he butchered P.O.T.A (yeah, I know it was a 're-telling' not a 're-make') why not allow him to do the same to this classic

:rolleyes

 

[BarryS]

You know, it's funny. I was just telling someone today that Tim Burton should direct a film version of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

Perhaps this isn't such a bad idea. It would be really cool if the Willy Wonka remake were rated R. The tunnel sequence could be much freakier.

 

[Rob Lutter]

Sigh... :rolleyes

New ideas? We don't need no stinkin' new ideas!

 

[Seth Paxton]

Well I think the subject matter is a perfect fit for him, and to be honest I think Johnny Depp could play Wonka pretty damn well in a Burton world.

I actually would be interested in seeing a new version/vision of this classic. It's been said a million times, remakes aren't inherently bad, especially when its not so much a remake as a new translation from famous literature. Nobody bitched when Kurosawa redid Shakespeare stories that had already been films, and not too many people were pissed when Wyler did Ben-Hur.


The bigger key is to put the right artist with the right subject...that's where POTA failed most of all I think.

 

[Jay E]

and not too many people were pissed when Wyler did Ben-Hur.

Come on, there's a big difference when a silent film is remade for the sound era and this example. I'd be happy if Hollywood would remake silent films instead of classic children's films that aren't crying out for a re-make.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I'm a huge Burton fan and can't wait to see what his vision of Wonka's world is. I love the original and generally despise remakes, but this one intrigues me.

I do wish that Burton would do another original first though. His last few films have all been visually amazing, but lacking otherwise (POTA, Sleepy Hollow, & Mars Attacks!)

 

[Rich Malloy]

I'm sure he'll be able to suck all the life and soul out of this one, too.

...cough cough (hack) cough...

 

[Tyler Gagnon]

I think i heard some time ago, that Marilyn Manson was to play Wonka.

 

[Ross Williams]

...cough cough (hack) cough...

Come on, you can't call a guy a hack cause he's directed a few duds. PotA was a turd, Sleepy Hollow was slightly better, but this guy has created some true classics: Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood.

I think he needs to step away from the big Hollywood specticals and do his own stories again. That's obviously when he's at his best. I have high hopes for Big Fish. I think it's going to be a true Burton film.

I was hoping that he had realized that he should stay away from these films. He hasn't learned. I think Burton's the right guy for the job, but it's a job that doesn't need to be done. Willy Wonka does not need a remake or a "re-imagining".

 

[Greg_M]

Why not just remake "The Wizard of OZ"? Some classic films shouldn't be remade - that's why they are classics. I can understanding remaking a silent film, or a film which didn't use much of the original novel. The Burton POTA was quite different than the 1968 version, with a comletely different story line (the only thing that was really the same was the title) Burton would be good, but don't see the need in updating this film when the original was a classic. The recent tv version of "The Music Man" (another film classic) was unwatchable, what a waste of time and money.

 

[Joseph Young]

Let me guess, the oompa loompas will all be over five feet tall, half of them beautiful women in loincloths, and willy wonka leads them to safety from a group of apes evolved from...

oops wrong movie

 

[Marvin Richardson]

I do wish that Burton would do another original first though.

According to IMDB he's got a movie coming out in 2003 called Big Fish. Here's a link: Big Fish at IMDB
I personally look forward to this. Sounds like it could be a winner. Won't change my love for the original, though.

 

[Tyler Gagnon]

King Kong.....Anyone!

 

[Qui-Gon John]

Frankly, I never understood why Tim Burton decided to make Planet of the Apes in the first place. Sure it had better special effects and was good to a point, but the need to have a shocking revelation at the end like the original made it a horrible film...the ending still doesn't make a bit of sense.

I always felt the Burton remake of POTA would have been much better and better received if it had been done so as to be as faithful to the novel as possible. In that Ape world, the ape society was modern, had modern day technology, like helicopters, etc. Doing this would have been a much more valid reason to do a remake than make something different than the book or the original movie.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Come on, you can't call a guy a hack cause he's directed a few duds. PotA was a turd, Sleepy Hollow was slightly better, but this guy has created some true classics: Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood.

There's the difference, CREATED, when given other people's work he tends to get creative too. And he should not be allowed to do that. The original movie is a horrific bastardization of the book, and Tim Burton is certainly the one who understands the mind of Dahl best. I just hope that for once he sticks to the text instead of going off on unnecessary wholesale invention. The book is short enough, and has no scenes that are very hard to realize with CG, so there's no need to really cut or change anything.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Films get remade all of the time for various reasons. Psycho, for example has already been mentioned (probably most of us think that this was not a good idea), but many are more forgiving of the remake of Lolita (I am not one).

Beauty and the Beast shows up 18 times as a movie in the IMDb, not all though are from the same French fairy tale. If one took the position that a classic should not be remade there would have been no more attempts after Jean Cocteau’s 1946 version.

That did not deter Disney, and while I do not think that version is nearly so magical as Cocteau’s, but a great many love the Disney, and it would take a brave person indeed to suggest that it should not have been made.

We can judge the Burton effort only after it has been made and then decide if we think it was a good or bad idea.

 

[Ron-P]

Well I think the subject matter is a perfect fit for him, and to be honest I think Johnny Depp could play Wonka pretty damn well in a Burton world.

I agree and think it's a great idea.


Peace Out~

 

[todd s]

Oompa oompa..I've got another remake for you...

Not sure how I feel about this. Although, Tim Burton style is wacky enough for it to work.

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Good points on both sides of the fence here. As a rule, I dislike the concept of remakes because quite often their inception is borne from laziness:

"Hey we own the rights to it. Let's make another one. It'll make $70 million on name recognition alone."

But Burton has directed some wonderful movies in the past (NO director has a spotless track record) and his directorial style certainly seems to "mesh" with the tone of Dahl's book.

As far as remakes "ruining" the originals, Van Sant's Psycho is just a running-gag footnote in the annals of modern cinema; it poses no threat to the original film's reputation. Ditto De Laurentiis' King Kong and Burton's own Planet of the Apes. Sucky movies all, but the original films are as well-remembered as ever.

And here's a fun question I asked my friends yesterday:

Wonka was a book first. Then it was a movie. So if they make another movie, is it a REMAKE of the original movie, or just another movie adaptation of the same source material?

There have been hundreds of great remakes over the years. It just seems that modern-day Hollywood is pretty much obsessed with cutting corners, and green-lighting several remakes just smacks of laziness.