Charlie Bucket comes from a poor family and spends most of his time dreaming about the chocolate they can’t afford.  Things change when Willy Wonka, head of the very popular Wonka Chocolate Empire, announces a contest in which five golden tickets have been hidden in the wrappers of Wonka Chocolate Bars and sent throughout the world.  The lucky kids who happen to find the tickets will be taken on a tour with one of their family members of the magical Wonka Factory.  Charlie miraculously finds a ticket, along with four children more rotten than him.  The tour of the factory will hold more than a few surprises for these visitors.

Willy Wonka owns this famous chocolate factory.  He is a candy genius.  He is rather unsociable and doesn’t like children very much.  He had a bad childhood and is bitter about the relationship with his father.  Plainly, he is more than a little bit weird.

Charlie Bucket is a poor boy.  He lives in a little house with his many family members.  He finds some money one day on the street and decides to buy a Wonka Chocolate Bar which happens to contain a golden ticket.

Veruca Salt is a spoiled rich girl who gets whatever she wishes.  She told her dad to get her a golden ticket.  So, her dad demanded that his employees in his nut factory to start unwrapping Wonka Bars in search of a golden ticket for Veruca instead of deshelling nuts.  Sure enough, they finally found her a ticket after weeks of unwrapping.

Mike Teavee is a boy who is very smart.  He sits in front of the TV playing video games all day long.  Mike got his golden ticket by cracking the shipping system of the Wonka Bars mathematically.

Credits

Tim Burton: Director/ Producer

Mike Johnson: Producer

Pamela Pettler: Screenplay

Jeffrey Auerbach: Executive Producer

Pete Kozachik: Director of Photography

Alex McDowell: Production Designer

Jonathan Lucas: Editor

Chris Lebenzon: Editor

Danny Elfman: Score & Songs

John August: Writer

Johnny Depp: Willy Wonka

Freddie Highmore: Charlie Bucket

David Kelly: Grandpa Joe

Helena Bonham Carter: Mrs. Bucket

Noah Taylor: Mr. Bucket

Missi Pyle: Mrs. Beauregarde

James Fox: Mr. Salt

Deep Roy: Oompa Loompa

Christopher Lee: Dr. Wonka

Adam Godley: Mr. Teavea

Franziska Troegher: Mrs. Gloop

AnnaSophia Robb: Violet Beauregarde

Julie Winter: Veruca Salt

Jordan Fry: Mike Teavee

Phillip Wiegratz: Augustus Gloop

Filming Facts

Release Date: July 15^th, 2005

Studio: Warner Bros.

Genre: Adventure, Fantasy

Official Site: www.chocolatefactorymovie.com

Rating: PG; for quirky situations, action and mild language

Runtime: 115 minutes

Box Office Funds: $206,456,431 (U.S. total)

Tagline: “The Factory Opens July 2005!”

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was filmed on location in Munich and Bavaria, Germany.

Trivia

• Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Christopher Walker, Nicholas Cage, Will Smith, Brad Pitt, and Michael Keaton were all considered for the part of Willy Wonka.  Marilyn Manson badly wanted the part.  Jim Carrey, Johnny Depp, and Adam Sandler were final contenders for this role too.  Depp was the lucky chosen one, though.

• The singing voice of the Oompa Loompas were overdubbed dozens of times to create the effect of different Oompa Loompas.

• The lyrics for four of the five musical/dance numbers were written by Roald Dahl.

• This movie is the 5^th Burton-Depp collaboration in 15 years.

• Deep Roy played every Oompa Loompa himself, repeating the same movements several hundred times in different places.  These all were then digitally joined together.  Each Oompa Loompa represents a separate performance of Deep Roy.

• All of the chocolate items used in the movie were real.  Most of them were created by the chocolate shop ChoccyWoccyDooDah in Brighton, UK.  The shop displayed and sold some of the featured items after the movie was released.

• 40 squirrels were trained for the scene where they pounce on Veruca Salt.

• The flashback in the scene where Willy Wonka had to wear a large dental brace is referenced to Burton’s childhood.

• Depp doesn’t like chocolate.  However, this is his second chocolate-based movie (first being Chocolat (2000)).

• At one point, a camera lens fell into a vat of chocolate and was ruined.

• Freddie Highmore received his part playing Charlie Bucket when Johnny Depp recommended that Tim Burton cast him due to this performance in Finding Neverland (2004).

• Scott Frank did two drafts of the script and then left the project leaving screenwriter John August to write the script.  John had never seen the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and asked Tim Burton to write the script.  After completing it, the original version was finally watched.

• Some buttons in the glass elevator include: Incompetent Fools, T-Bone Steak Jell-O, Secretarial Poodles, Cocoa Cats, Mechanical Clouds, Stars and their Pies, Nice Plums, Up & Out, Fragile Egos, Black Box of Frogs, Weird Lollipops, Mighty Jam Monitor, Creative Dogs Pie Cream, Spewed Vegetables, T.V. Room, Naffy Taffy, Lickety Split Peas, Honeycombs & Brushes, and Old Sneezes & Smells Dpt.

• The lollipops on the trees, the giant pink sugar canes, and the giant humbugs were real sugar-candy.

• Willy Wonka’s boat would eventually float on chocolate.  It took 20 weeks to build.

• The role of Dr. Wonka, Christopher Lee, laws only written to provide Willy Wonka’s family history.

• 110,000 plastic bars were made and wrapped in silver Nestle wrappers for the Wonka Bars.

• Nestle provided 1,850 bars of real chocolate.

• 206,563.48 U.S. gallons of fake chocolate were used for the river.

• 38,430. 42 U.S. gallons of fake chocolate were used for the waterfall.

• In the same room as the machine that makes the “3-corse meal chewing gum”, there are large rotating drums that look like bowls filled with colored balls.  These are real machines that actually produce large Jawbreakers, or Gobstoppers.

• The UPC code on the giant bar of chocolate in one scene to be sent my television is 034000190003, which is the UPC code for the 7 oz. Hershey's Milk Chocolate bars.  The WIlly Wonka Candy Co. is a brand of Nestle, one of Hershey's biggest competitors.