‘Wonka’ director Paul King says Hugh Grant casting was a “light-bulb moment”
Wonka director Paul King has explained how casting Hugh Grant as the iconic miniature creature of the Oompa Loompa was the key to his adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl character.
“Going back to the book, and reading all those poems, and hearing [the Oompa Loompas’] voice as a very sort of cynical, sarcastic, cruel, funny, but wicked voice, I went, ‘Oh… That’s sort of a bit like Hugh!’,” King told Empire shortly before the trailer launch. “It was a real light bulb moment – you go, ‘Hugh Grant’s an Oompa-Loompa! Yes please! Merry Christmas, with a bow on it.’”
King had previously directed Grant in the 2017 film Paddington 2, the universally praised sequel to 2014’s Paddington. According to King, the 1971 film version of the story, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, was the primary design inspiration behind Grant’s Oompa Loompa.
“It just felt like that’s what an Oompa Loompa was, in my head. I suppose because the ’71 movie is so beloved by me, as well as other people, I didn’t really want to reinvent the wheel on that,” he says. “I felt like doing something that sat with that iconography. I love ‘Pure Imagination’, I love the Oompa Loompa songs, I loved how the Oompa Loompas looked. And that felt like the iconic look of Oompa Loompas.”
King also mentioned that he had to disregard most of the design choices made by Tim Burton in his 2005 adaptation, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
“I couldn’t do what Tim Burton does at all – because he’s a genius – but I could never have taken that and remade it in the way he did,” King said. “And I’m not sure I would want to, because I liked [the original] so much.”
“I’m so glad we managed to keep it vaguely secret,” King added. “He looks terrific, but because it’s CG, it looks terrible until it looks good. And then you go, ‘Ah, perfect!’ It’s a miracle.”
Watch the first trailer for Wonka down below.
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