Tim Burton Gives 'Willy Wonka' A Backstory

[Tuesday, July 5th, 2005]
Willy WonkaCharlie and the Chocolate Factory director Tim Burton says that the character of Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) has a new backstory that involves a troubled relationship with his father. "Yeah, I've got some problems, you know?" Burton told Sci-Fi Wire. "You've seen me enough to realize that by now, haven't you?"

In the movie, Wonka flashes back frequently to his childhood with his stern father, a dentist played by Christopher Lee. "You try to work out your issues, but then you realize those kinds of traumatic issues just stay with you forever," Burton said. "Somehow they just keep reoccurring. No matter how hard I try to get them out of my head, they sort of stay there."

"We sort of felt that if you have an eccentric character—and it's fine; it works in the book—we just felt in the movie, you've got a guy that's acting that strange, you kind of want to get a flavor of why he is the way he is," Burton said. "Otherwise he's just a weirdo. And you want to at least have a sense as to why he's acting so strangely and why he's got some problems. If ... your father were a dentist and Christopher Lee, you can see where that might cause you some traumatic experiences in your life."

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