Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Audiobook
citation needed] The book was first made into a feature film as a musical, titled Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), directed by Mel Stuart, produced by David L. Wolper, and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, character actor Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe, and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket. The film had an estimated budget of $2.9 million but grossed only $4 million and was considered a box-office disappointment. Exponential home video and DVD sales, as well as repeated television airings, resulted in the film's subsequently becoming a cult classic. Concurrently with the 1971 film, the Quaker Oats Company introduced a line of candies whose marketing uses the book's characters and imagery. The BBC produced an adaptation for Radio 4 in the early 1980s.[citation needed] In 1985, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the ZX Spectrum by developer Soft Options and publisher Hill MacGibbon. Another film version, titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket, Deep Roy as the Oompa-Loompas, Philip Wiegratz as Augustus Gloop, and Geoffrey Holder as the Narrator, was a hit, grossing about $470 million worldwide with an estimated budget of $150 million. The 1971 and 2005 films are consistent with the written work to varying degrees. The Burton film greatly expanded Willy Wonka's personal back-story borrowing many themes and elements from the book's sequel. Both films heavily expanded the personalities of the four bad children and their parents from the limited descriptions in the book.[citation needed] A video game, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory based on Burton's adaptation, was released on 11 July 2005. On 1 April 2006, the British theme park Alton Towers opened a family attraction themed around the story. The ride features a boat section, where guests travel around the chocolate factory in bright pink boats on a chocolate river. In the final stage of the ride, guests enter one of two glass elevators, where they join Willy Wonka as they travel around the factory, eventually shooting up and out through the glass roof. The Estate of Roald Dahl sanctioned an operatic adaptation called The Golden Ticket. It was written by American composer Peter Ash and British librettist Donald Sturrock. The Golden Ticket has completely original music and was commissioned by American Lyric Theater, Lawrence Edelson (producing artistic director), and Felicity Dahl. The opera received its world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on 13 June 2010, in a co-production with American Lyric Theater and Wexford Festival Opera. A musical based on the novel, titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, premiered at the West End's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in May 2013 and officially opened on 25 June. The show is directed by Sam Mendes, with new songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and stars Douglas Hodge as Willy Wonka. The production broke records for weekly ticket sales. Coincidentally, Hodge was also the voice of a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory audiobook, as part of a package of Roald Dahl CDs read by celebrities. In October 2016, Variety reported that Warner Bros has acquired the rights to the Willy Wonka character from the Roald Dahl Estate and is planning a new film centred around the eccentric character with David Heyman producing with the Dahl Estate manager Michael Siegel; Kevin McCormick is executive producing and Simon Rich is penning the script while Courtenay Valenti and Jon Gonda are overseeing the project for the studio. In February 2018, Paul King entered final negotiations to direct the film. On November 27, 2018, Netflix was revealed to be developing an "animated series event" based on Roald Dahl's books, which will include a television series based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the novel's sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. In March 5, 2020, it was reported that Taika Waititi will write, direct, and executive-produce both the series and a spin-off animated series focused on the Oompa Loompas. In 2002, Monty Python member Eric Idle narrated the audiobook version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
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