'Wonka' Unwraps Its Golden Ticket To Max
Fans will sugar rush right to the streamer to watch the hit film
Oh how sweet. With the Max streaming dates for both of Warner Bros.’s other December releases, The Color Purple and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom already revealed, with the former already streaming, it was only a matter of time before Wonka, the last remaining and the biggest hit, got its date as well. The studio announced that the Willy Wonka origin story will begin streaming exclusively on Max on March 8.
Deadline seems to imply Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav did not disclose a specific date during the company earnings call, or their version of the news forgot that specific detail (I did not listen to the publicly-available call), but the streamer’s socials did confirm the specific date. With a December 15 theatrical release, it will have taken 84 days, a full 12 weeks to reach Max. That is a full month (31 days, the fullest a month can be) longer than the 53 days it took The Color Purple (which opened Christmas Day) and 17 days longer than Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom which arrives on Tuesday, February 27.
There could be various reasons why despite great box office success, Wonka isn’t being held for even slightly longer, let alone Barbie’s 158. For example, star Timothee Chalamet’s next Warner Bros. film, Dune: Part Two, opens the previous week. He plays Wonka as “a young man as he becomes the world’s greatest inventor, magician and chocolate-maker”, per the studio’s synopsis. His co-stars include Olivia Colman as Mrs. Scrubitt, Keegan-Michael Key as the corrupt chief of police, Rowan Atkinson as the also-corrupt chocolate-addicted cleric Father Julius, Hugh Grant as Lofty the Oompa Loompa, as well as Calah Lane, Paterson Joseph, Mathew Baynton, Rich Fulcher, Rakhee Thakrar, Tom Davis, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Matt Lucas, and Natasha Rothwell.
Wonka has made $600 million at the box office worldwide, on an approximate $125 million budget. It is directed by Paddington director Paul King, his highest-grossing film yet. He wrote the screenplay with Simon Farnaby based on a story by King and of course, characters created by Roald Dahl that originated from his beloved novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Michael Siegel, Cate Adams, Rosie Alison and Tim Wellspring are executive producers.
