The Netflix top 10 can be unpredictable at times, with certain movies appearing for no apparent reason while others appear out of nowhere. With Charlie and the Chocolate Factory claiming the number 10 spot on Netflix’s list of the best 10 movies, this latest addition to the huge list has a little bit of both.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton’s second film version of Roald Dahl’s children’s book, was released in 2005. In the titular character, Freddie Highmore is joined by Johnny Depp, who portrays Willy Wonka in a very unique way.
Because of his continuing defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard, Johnny Depp’s latest film, The Rum Diary, has made it into the top 10. Then again, it’s not a job you’d generally connect with Depp, even if it is one of his most well-known.
On a $150 million budget, the film brought in $475 million at the box office, making it Tim Burton’s second-highest grossing film after Alice in Wonderland. However, Rotten Tomatoes’ audience rating, based on over 250,000 ratings, is a pitiful 51 percent. Critics, on the other hand, give the film an impressive 83 percent approval rating.
The film was dubbed “popular yet divided” by Entertainment Weekly and “everlastingly polarising” by Variety in the years following its premiere. While playing Willy Wonka in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Gene Wilder was highly critical and seemed to believe that the film was nothing more than a profit-making exercise for the studio.
To his credit, Roald Dahl reportedly disapproved of the ’70s remake and was particularly upset that Wonka, not Charlie, was the centre of attention. In the author’s opinion, Spike Milligan, a British comic, would have been a better fit for the role of Wilder.
However, despite being a more authentic rendition of Dahl’s original work, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005 film) does take certain creative modifications with the source material. For example, it revealed a lot about Wonka’s past, which diminished his enigma somewhat, and made him seem to have an odd antipathy to youngsters. Wonka had voluntarily allowed them access to his factory, so this last move was puzzling.
In other words, don’t anticipate a shot-for-shot recreation of the 1971 film if you haven’t watched the movie previously. This isn’t the kind of film you’d expect to see.
Netflix negotiated a partnership with the Roald Dahl Company in 2018 before purchasing the company for $500 million last year, so we should expect to see a lot more Roald Dahl work in the near future.
For the time being, Taika Waititi is proving to be the busiest man in Hollywood with his new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake and sequel.