Hugh Grant plays the first-ever Oompa Loompa in Wonka
In a trailer screened at CinemaCon, Hugh Grant appears as the first Oompa to Timothée Chalamet's Wonka
Aux News Wonka
Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination… the kind where Hugh Grant can become an orange, knee-high Oompa Loompa. The A.V. Club was in the room where it happened on Tuesday, “the room” being CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Nevada, and “it” being the exclusive trailer debut for Wonka. The upcoming Warner Bros. production, starring Timothee Chalamet as the titular character, is slated to premiere on December 15, and CinemaCon attendees got the first sweet taste of the fantastical origin story.
While fans were expecting the origin story of ol’ Willy himself—and photos from set gave us an idea of what he’ll look like—the bigger surprise was a first look at Grant as one of the iconic diminutive servants/assistants/problematically employed semi-humanoid creatures from Roald Dahl’s classic. Specifically, Grant plays the first Oompa Loompa that Wonka ever encounters. “That was a trip,” Chalamet said on stage in reference to working with his CGI’d co-star. “Working with Hugh is a dream come true,” the actor said, adding that Grant is “one of our greats, from Merchant Ivory Films to Notting Hill.”
Wonka reunites Grant with his Paddington 2 director Paul King, and marks the latest in a string of family-friendly films on the ’90s heartthrob’s recent resumé. He just recently came off an enjoyably eventful press tour for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a similar showing when Wonka press goes into full gear.
For now, we’ve only got the teaser from CinemaCon—not yet available online—which featured Chalamet as a proto-Gene Wilder traveling the world to find the perfect chocolate while mourning the loss of his mother. “Too much chocolate, and swimming in actual chocolate,” is how the star described the experience. “That’s one of the more bizarre experiences I’ve had for sure.”
27 Comments
Jared Leto would have undergone Cotton Hill surgery to give a more authentic Oompa Loompa performance.
“…hadda beat ‘em to death with a large piece o’ Fatty. Next thing I know, I woke up and they was sewin’ my feet onta my knees.”
Grant was excellent in Paddington 2, so being cast in another family film directed by Paul King sounds promising.
Is this the Oompa-Loompa that was swimming around in the chocolate river where he finds the One Ring and…?
Riddle contest?
i look forward to seeing a charmingly befuddled oompa loompa
“That oompa loompa just blew his ass out from too many Coney dogs!”
“Blowing corn dogs out your ass is will cost you extra suga.” – Divine
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/hugh-grant-arrest-divine-brown-sex-worker-nine-months-elizabeth-hurley-a9584341.html
And boy is he pissed about it!
First-ever oompa loompa? Is he the Jango Fett of oompa loompas?
First one Wonka meets. Poor headline writing. Shocking, that.
“Your oopma loompas are very impressive, you must be very proud.”
“Doompiddy-doo, baby!”
I’m just a simple pygmie, trying to make my way through the chocolaverse.
Oompa loomp, oompa loomp, will you do the fandango?!
I gotta say, I was curious how they were going to treat one of the few minorities represented as such in the Dahl books, which was troublesome in the books, to say the least. For example, Burton did a really good job with Deep Roy in that regard.But I definitely did *not* see the producers solving the problem by having them represented by and descended from possibly the whitest guy on the planet.
I was curious about that too. Is he going to be white in the film, or maybe they’ll go the route of making them green as in the first iteration to try to get away from the, you know, enslavement of brown people angle? It’s definitely an interesting choice if they made them white, I’ll say that.
Oompa Loompas love chocolate, right? So, he was eating a bowl full of chocolate and he just dove in there face first and that’s why they had to do his makeup like that.
I realize the old Oompa Loompas were orange. I don’t know why I thought they were green. I guess the green hair.
Grant is just cashing those pay checks and that is great.I honestly thought he was good in D&D. He is amazing in Paddington 2.
Having fun and getting paid is the way to go!
I too love that for him.
Why is this movie being made?
Studio has an IP and needs to make money from it. Only reason. Certainly not for any creative reasons.
Will this be a second actor that the razzies will have to withdraw nominations for?
I wish we could call a moratorium on the dead parent trope. Can there be anything else that motivates characters besides mommy/daddy issues? As a parent myself, who would prefer to be alive, I’d like to imagine so.