Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a 1971 American musical fantasy film directed by Mel Stuart, and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. It is an adaptation of the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Dahl was credited with writing the film's screenplay however David Seltzer, who went uncredited in the film, was brought in to re-work Dahl's screenplay against his wishes making major changes to the ending and adding musical numbers. These changes and other decisions made by the director led Dahl to disown the film.

The film tells the story of Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) as he receives a Golden Ticket and visits Willy Wonka's chocolate factory with four other children from around the world. Filming took place in Munich in 1970, and the film was released by Paramount Pictures on June 30, 1971. With a budget of just $3 million, the film received generally positive reviews and earned $4 million by the end of its original run. Paramount distributed the film until 1977, and beginning in the 1980s, Warner Bros. assumed control of the rights for home entertainment purposes. The film then made an additional $21 million during its re-release by Warner Bros. under its Family Entertainment banner in 1996. The film became highly popular in part through repeated television airings and home entertainment sales. In 1972, the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score, and Wilder was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, but lost both to Fiddler on the Roof. The film also introduced the song "The Candy Man", which went on to become a popular hit when recorded by Sammy Davis Jr.. In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

in 2019, The Walt Disney Company bought rights to the film after the United Kingdom collapsed.

Plot
In an unnamed town, children visit a candy shop. Charlie Bucket, whose family is poor, stares through the window as the shop owner sings "The Candy Man". Walking home, he passes Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. A mysterious tinker recites the first lines of William Allingham's poem "The Fairies", and tells Charlie, "Nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out." Charlie rushes home to his widowed mother and four bedridden grandparents. After he tells Grandpa Joe about the tinker, Joe tells him that Wonka locked the factory because other candy makers, including archrival Arthur Slugworth, sent in spies disguised as employees to steal his recipes. Wonka disappeared, but three years later began selling more candy; the origin of Wonka's labor force is unknown.

Wonka announces to the world that he has hidden five "Golden Tickets" in chocolate Wonka Bars. The finders of these tickets will be given a factory tour and a lifetime supply of chocolate. Four of the tickets are found by Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous German boy; Veruca Salt, a spoiled British girl; Violet Beauregarde, a gum-chewing American girl; and Mike Teavee, a television-obsessed American boy. As each winner is heralded to the world on TV, a man whispers to them. Meanwhile, Charlie opens two Wonka Bars but finds no Golden Ticket and loses hope, despite wanting it more than anyone. Soon, the newspapers announce the fifth ticket is supposedly found by a millionaire in Paraguay.

Charlie finds money in a gutter and uses it to buy a Scrumdidilyumptious. With the change, he buys a Wonka Bar for Joe. The newspapers reveal that the Paraguayan millionaire's ticket is a forgery; when Charlie opens the Wonka Bar, he finds the fifth golden ticket. While rushing home, he is confronted by the same man seen whispering to the other winners, who introduces himself as Slugworth and offers to pay for a sample of Wonka's latest creation, the Everlasting Gobstopper.

Charlie returns home with his news. Joe is so elated that he finds he can walk; Charlie chooses him as his chaperone and they sing "I've Got A Golden Ticket". The next day, Wonka greets the ticket winners and leads them inside where each signs an extensive contract before the tour. The factory includes a river of chocolate, edible mushrooms, lickable wallpaper, and other sweets and inventions. As the visitors sample these, Wonka sings "Pure Imagination". The visitors then see Wonka's workers who are small men known as Oompa-Loompas, who sing the first verse of "Oompa-Loompa".

Augustus falls into the chocolate river and is sucked up a pipe to the Fudge Room. In the Inventing Room, everyone in the group is given an Everlasting Gobstopper. Violet becomes a large blueberry after chewing an experimental gum containing a three-course meal despite Wonka's warnings. She is taken to another room where she is drained of blueberry juice and the Oompa-Loompas sing another verse of their song. The group reaches the Fizzy Lifting Drinks Room, where Charlie and Grandpa Joe ignore Wonka's warning and sample the drinks. They are not caught, but have a near-fatal encounter with an exhaust fan. In the Chocolate Eggs Room, Wonka uses geese to lay golden eggs. Veruca demands one and sings, "I Want It Now", then falls into a garbage chute leading to the furnace. Her father falls in while trying to rescue her. The group tests out Wonka's Wonkavision, only to have Mike teleport himself and become only a few inches tall.

Only Charlie and Grandpa Joe remain, but Wonka dismisses them without the promised chocolate. When Grandpa Joe asks him why, Wonka angrily replies they violated the contract by stealing Fizzy Lifting Drinks and will receive nothing. Joe suggests to Charlie that he should give Slugworth the Gobstopper, but Charlie returns the candy to Wonka.

When Charlie puts the candy on the desk, Wonka changes his tone and declares Charlie the winner. He reveals that "Slugworth" is an employee of his, and the offer to buy the Gobstopper was a morality test which only Charlie passed. The trio enter the "Wonkavator", a multi-directional glass elevator that flies out of the factory. Soaring over the city, Wonka reveals that his actual prize is the factory; Wonka created the contest to find a child worthy to be his heir and Charlie and his family can immediately move into the factory.

Main cast



 * Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka
 * Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe
 * Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket
 * Roy Kinnear as Henry Salt
 * Julie Dawn Cole as Veruca Salt
 * Leonard Stone as Sam Beauregarde
 * Denise Nickerson as Violet Beauregarde
 * Dodo Denney as Mrs. Teevee
 * Paris Themmen as Mike Teevee
 * Ursula Reit as Mrs. Gloop
 * Michael Bollner as Augustus Gloop
 * Diana Sowle as Mrs. Bucket
 * Aubrey Woods as Bill, the Candy Shop owner
 * David Battley as Mr. Turkentine
 * Günter Meisner as Arthur Slugworth/Mr. Wilkinson
 * Peter Capell as The Tinker
 * Werner Heyking as Mr. Jopeck
 * Peter Stuart as Winkelmann

Oompa Loompas

 * Rusty Goffe
 * Rudy Borgstaller
 * George Claydon
 * Malcolm Dixon
 * Ismed Hassan
 * Norman McGlen
 * Angelo Muscat
 * Pepe Poupee
 * Marcus Powell
 * Albert Wilkinson

Development
The idea for adapting the book into a film came about when director Mel Stuart's ten-year-old daughter read the book and asked her father to make a film out of it, with "Uncle Dave" (producer David L. Wolper) producing it. Stuart showed the book to Wolper, who happened to be in the midst of talks with the Quaker Oats Company regarding a vehicle to introduce a new candy bar from its Chicago-based Breaker Confections subsidiary (since renamed the Willy Wonka Candy Company and sold to Nestlé). Wolper persuaded the company, which had no previous experience in the film industry, to buy the rights to the book and finance the picture for the purpose of promoting a new Quaker Oats Wonka Bar.

It was agreed that the film would be a children's musical, and that Dahl himself would write the screenplay. However, the title was changed to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Screenwriter David Seltzer conceived a gimmick exclusively for the film that had Wonka quoting numerous literary sources, such as Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Ode, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Seltzer also worked Slugworth (only mentioned as a rival candy maker in the book) into the plot as an actual character (only to be revealed to be Wilkinson, one of Wonka's agents, at the end of the film).

Casting
All six members of Monty Python: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, expressed interest in playing Wonka, but at the time they were deemed not big enough names for an international audience. Three of the members, Cleese, Idle and Palin, were later seriously considered for the same role in Tim Burton's version.

Before Wilder was officially cast for the role, producers considered Fred Astaire, Joel Grey, Ron Moody and Jon Pertwee. Spike Milligan was Roald Dahl's original choice to play Willy Wonka. Peter Sellers even begged Dahl for the role.

When Wilder was cast for the role, he accepted it on one condition:"When I make my first entrance, I'd like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I'm walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause."

- Gene Wilder The reason why Wilder wanted this in the film was that "from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth."

Jean Stapleton turned down the role of Mrs. Teevee. Jim Backus was considered for the role of Sam Beauregarde. Sammy Davis, Jr. wanted to play Bill, the candy store owner, but Stuart did not like the idea because he felt that the presence of a big star in the candy store scene would break the reality. Nevertheless, Davis' recording of the film's opening musical number, "The Candy Man," would top the Billboard magazine record charts in 1972, despite the fact that Davis initially hated the song. Anthony Newley also wanted to play Bill, but Stuart also objected to this for the same reason.

Filming
Principal photography commenced on April 30, 1970, and ended on November 19, 1970. The primary shooting location was Munich, Bavaria, West Germany, because it was significantly cheaper than filming in the United States and the setting was conducive to Wonka's factory; Stuart also liked the ambiguity and unfamiliarity of the location. External shots of the factory were filmed at the gasworks of Stadtwerke München (Emmy-Noether-Straße 10); the entrance and side buildings still exist. The exterior of Charlie Bucket's house, which was only a set constructed for the film, was filmed at Quellenstraße in Munich, Bavaria. Charlie's school was filmed at Katholisches Pfarramt St. Sylvester, Biedersteiner Straße 1 in Munich. Bill's Candy Shop was filmed at Lilienstraße, Munich. The closing sequence when the Wonkavator is flying above the factory is footage of Nördlingen in Bavaria.

Production designer Harper Goff centered the factory on the massive Chocolate Room. According to Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee, "The river was made of water with food coloring. At one point, they poured some cocoa powder into it to try to thicken it but it didn't really work. When asked this question, Michael Böllner, who played Augustus Gloop, answers, 'It vas dirty, stinking vater.'"

When interviewed for the 30th anniversary special edition, Gene Wilder stated that he enjoyed working with most of the child actors, but said that he and the crew had some problems with Paris Themmen, claiming that he was "a handful".

Promotion
Before its release, the film received advance publicity though TV commercials offering a "Willy Wonka candy factory kit" for sending $1.00 and two seals from boxes of Quaker cereals such as King Vitaman, Life and any of the Cap'n Crunch brands.

Reception
Willy Wonka was released on June 30, 1971. The film was not a big success, being the fifty-third highest-grossing film of the year in the U.S., earning just over $2.1 million on its opening weekend, although it received positive reviews from critics such as Roger Ebert, who compared it to The Wizard of Oz.

Seeing no significant financial advantage, Paramount decided against renewing its distribution deal for the film when it expired in 1977. Later that year, Warner Communications, the then-parent company of Warner Bros., acquired Wolper Pictures, Ltd., which led to Quaker Oats selling its share of the film's rights to Warner Bros. for $500,000 at the same time.

By the mid-1980s, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory had experienced a spike in popularity thanks in large part to repeated television broadcasts and home video sales. Following a 25th anniversary theatrical re-release in 1996, it was released on DVD the next year, allowing it to reach a new generation of viewers. The film was released as a remastered special edition on DVD and VHS in 2001 to commemorate the film's 30th anniversary. In 2003, Entertainment Weekly ranked it 25th in the "Top 50 Cult Movies" of all time.

Warner's ownership of the film helped them get the rights to make a new version in 2005, named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after the original book, as well as a stage musical adaptation that had its premiere in London in 2013.

, the film holds an 89% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the critical consensus stating, "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is strange yet comforting, full of narrative detours that don't always work but express the film's uniqueness".

Willy Wonka was ranked No. 74 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments for the "scary tunnel" scene.

American Film Institute Lists
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs - Nominated
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
 * "The Candy Man" - Nominated
 * AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals - Nominated
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers - Nominated
 * AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Fantasy Film

Dahl's reaction
Dahl disowned the film, the script of which was partially rewritten by David Seltzer after Dahl failed to meet deadlines. Dahl said he was "disappointed" because "he thought it placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie", as well as the casting of Gene Wilder instead of Spike Milligan. Dahl was also "infuriated" by the deviations in the plot Seltzer devised in his draft of the screenplay, including the conversion of Slugworth, a minor character in the book, into a spy (so that the movie could have a villain) and the "fizzy lifting drinks" scene along with music other than the original Oompa Loompa compositions (including Pure Imagination, and The Candy Man, and the ending dialogue for the movie. In 1996, Dahl's second wife Felicity commented on her husband's objections towards the film saying "they always want to change a book's storyline. What makes Hollywood think children want the endings changed for a film, when they accept it in a book?"

Television
The film made its television debut on November 23, 1975 on NBC. There was a little controversy with the showing as the Oakland Raiders vs Washington Redskins (26-23) Football game went into overtime, and the first 40 minutes of the movie were cut. The film placed 19th in the TV Ratings for the week ending Nov 23, beating out The Streets of San Francisco and Little House on the Prairie. The next TV showing of the film was on May 2, 1976, where it placed 46th in the ratings. Some TV listings indicate the showing was part of the World of Disney time slot.

Home media
The film was first released on DVD in 1997/1999 in a "25th anniversary edition" as a double sided disc containing a widescreen and "standard" version. The "standard" version is an open matte print, where the mattes used to make the image widescreen are removed, revealing information originally intended to be hidden from viewers. VHS copies were also available, but only containing the "standard" version.

A special edition DVD was released, celebrating the film's 30th anniversary, on August 28, 2001, but in fullscreen only. Due to the lack of a letterboxed release, fan petitioning eventually led Warner Home Video to issue a widescreen version on November 13, 2001. It was also released on VHS, with only one of the special features (a making-of feature). Several original cast members reunited to film documentary footage for this special edition DVD release. The two editions featured restored sound, and better picture quality. In addition to the documentary, the DVD included a trailer, a gallery, and audio commentary by the cast.

In 2007, Warner Home Video released the film on HD DVD with all the bonus features from the 2001 DVD. The film was released on Blu-ray on October 20, 2009. It includes all the bonus features from the 2001 DVD and 2007 HD-DVD as well as a 38-page book.

In 2011, a new deluxe-40th-anniversary edition Blu-ray/DVD set was released on November 1, consisting of the film on Blu-ray Disc and DVD as well as a bonus features disc. The set also included a variety of rarities such as a Wonka Bar-designed tin, four scented pencils, a scented eraser, a book detailing the making of the film, original production papers and a Golden Ticket to win a trip to Los Angeles.

in 2021, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the film on the Green-Ray Disc. the result was solved by Sean Bailey.

Music
The Academy Award-nominated original score and songs were composed by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, and musical direction was by Walter Scharf. The soundtrack was first released by Paramount Records in 1971. On October 8, 1996, Hip-O Records (in conjunction with MCA Records, which by then owned the Paramount catalog), released the soundtrack on CD as a "25th Anniversary Edition".

The music and songs, in order of appearance, are:
 * 1) "Main Title" – Instrumental medley of "(I've Got A) Golden Ticket" and "Pure Imagination"
 * 2) "The Candy Man" – Aubrey Woods
 * 3) "Cheer Up, Charlie" – Diana Lee (dubbing over Diana Sowle)
 * 4) "(I've Got A) Golden Ticket" – Jack Albertson and Peter Ostrum
 * 5) "Pure Imagination" – Gene Wilder
 * 6) "Oompa Loompa (Augustus)" – The Oompa Loompas
 * 7) "The Wondrous Boat Ride"/"The Rowing Song" – Gene Wilder
 * 8) "Oompa Loompa (Violet)" – The Oompa Loompas
 * 9) "I Want It Now!" – Julie Dawn Cole
 * 10) "Oompa Loompa (Veruca)" – The Oompa Loompas
 * 11) "Ach, so fromm" (alternately titled "M'appari", from Martha) – Gene Wilder
 * 12) "Oompa Loompa (Mike)" – The Oompa Loompas
 * 13) "End Credits" – "Pure Imagination"

Soundtrack
The track listing for the soundtrack is as follows:
 * 1) "Main Title" ("Golden Ticket"/"Pure Imagination")
 * 2) "The Candy Man"
 * 3) "Charlie's Paper Run"
 * 4) "Cheer Up Charlie"
 * 5) "Lucky Charlie"
 * 6) "(I've Got A) Golden Ticket"
 * 7) "Pure Imagination"
 * 8) "Oompa Loompa"
 * 9) "The Wondrous Boat Ride"
 * 10) "Everlasting Gobstoppers/Oompa Loompa"
 * 11) "The Bubble Machine"
 * 12) "I Want It Now/Oompa Loompa"
 * 13) "Wonkamobile, Wonkavision/Oompa Loompa"
 * 14) "Wonkavator/End Title" ("Pure Imagination")