One can understand how there was great material to be mined from origin stories of iconic movie characters ranging from Anakin Skywalker to Batman to Hannibal Lecter to Vito Corleone to Cruella de Vil — but Willy Wonka? I’m not so sure there was a steady drumbeat for a prequel about the Roald Dahl character who first appeared in the 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” was memorably portrayed by Gene Wilder in the 1971 film and resurfaced in that bizarre Johnny Depp/Tim Burton movie from 2005.
Where did the smiling but kind of sadistic and creepy and manipulative and exploitative Willy Wonka come from? Do we care?
