Gene Wilder Really Didn't Like the Johnny Depp Version of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'
Hollywood suffered a tremendous loss earlier this week with the passing of Gene Wilder at the age of 83. His cinematic legacy has rightly received its fair share of glowing tributes, many of them focused on what’s arguably his most famous role, the top-hatted candy man in 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. When it came to the 2005 remake of the film, however, Wilder was, to put it mildly, not a fan.
In his last full-length interview, conducted in 2013 at New York City’s 92nd St. Y by TCM’s Robert Osborne, Wilder made it clear that he thought director Tim Burton’s adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — with Johnny Depp as a pasty-faced and decidedly peculiar Willy Wonka — was nothing less than insult to his prior classic. And while he expressed no love for Burton’s movies in general, he laid the blame for the do-over squarely at the feet of studio.
“I think it’s an insult. And it’s probably Warner Bros.’ insult, I think. I like Warner Bros. for other reasons. But to do that with Johnny Depp, who I think is a good actor, and I like him. But I don’t care for that director. He’s a talented man, but I don’t care for him for doing stuff like he did.”
Hopefully, the star took some small comfort in the fact that Burton and Depp’s film has never been considered an equal to its predecessor, which remains one of cinema’s most wonderfully idiosyncratic works. To hear Wilder’s thoughts on not only Willy Wonka, but his entire career, you can watch Osborne’s terrific interview with Wilder above.