2019

Narrated intro – shown as a flyover of the small-ish city where the factory is located

Over 40 years ago, a young man by the name of Charlie Bucket became the luckiest boy in the world. He pulled a Golden Ticket and went on a tour of the illustrious Wonka Chocolate Factory. The contest turned out to be so much more than anyone could have imagined and Charlie ended up as the new owner of the chocolate factory.

For years he worked with the legendary Willy Wonka, learning the secrets of the factory and serving as an apprentice, but eventually Charlie took over and began to run things himself. He didn’t want to lose the magic of the Wonka name, so he kept it on the factory and the candy, but he didn’t stop there…..

We can tell from the flyover that the Wonka name is now on many more products, seen being loaded onto shipping trucks.

The flyover pans back to show grown-up Charlie, flying over the city in his glass elevator, eventually docking back into the building, the doors open and Charlie steps out.

Charlie is in his 50’s now. We can tell from his first appearance on screen that he still has a kind smile and a love for his work. He heads from the elevator through the factory floor, greeting employees (Oompa Loompa’s included) and checking in on the status of things with the business. Everyone seems happy and eager to please Charlie.

He eventually arrives at his lab/office, which is clearly heavily secured, with multiple levels of identification. He scans a badge, enters a code, looks into a device that scans his eye, deposits his gum into a small tray, and he’s just about to enter a vault-style door when his phone rings. He takes it out of his pocket to see that it is his son, Joe. Joe is 13-ish and looks a bit like the Charlie Bucket we all remember from the original Willy Wonka film. Joe reminds his father that he’s got practice later in the day and doesn’t want Charlie to forget to leave his lab in time to make it to pick him up from school. Charlie agrees, hangs up, sets an alarm on his phone as a reminder, and heads through a series of doors labelled TOP SECRET – NOBODY ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT.

Our opening credits roll, showing a video recap of the years of Wonka Chocolates that we’ve missed since the original film – magazine covers, grand openings, new candy announcements, and more, as cast and crew names appear on screen.

We jump ahead to later that day, with young Joe returning to the Bucket family home and entering the front door. He throws down his bag and calls out for his mother. We see his siblings, a brother and sister (about 10 and 15 respectively) and mom all hanging out in the kitchen. Joe is extremely upset and proceeds to share with the rest of the family that his Dad failed to pick him up at school and is not answering his phone.

Everyone is concerned, but it’s right about that time that they receive a family text from Charlie, stating that he will be working late at the office that night and nobody should worry. Joe is (of course) hurt that his father didn’t mention him in the text or the fact that he had forgotten to pick him up.

Charlie doesn’t make it home that night, but texts again to say that he will be soon. Mom has already committed to a trip out of the country for a charity project and heads out early the next morning for her trip, but is guaranteed by Charlie (via text) that he’ll be there to pick up the kids after school.

All is good, until the kids are left stranded at school. They meet up and start to talk about how worried they are. They head up to the Wonka factory to see what’s going on. While they are not supposed to be in the restricted area, Joe knows a trick or two to get around the security features leading to those TOP SECRET doors.

The kids investigate and find that their father is NOT in his office. Instead, they find that some of their father’s security measures within his lab/office have been tripped. Joe heads to a panel on the wall and opens it up to expose a small storage area with a glass front. Inside, the kids can see a small man, like shrunken small, within the box. He’s VERY angry and shouting something.

They flip a switch on the wall nearby and the little man’s voice is amplified over a speaker. “Curse that Charlie Bucket!!!” How did he do this? – Well, the jokes on him. He’s not the only one with some tricks up his sleeve!”

The shrunken man won’t give up his name or any details about himself, but says that unless the kids let him go, they’ll never see their father again. What “shrunken man” didn’t know was that Charlie had his own tracking system, similar to Find My iPhone, and always kept the tracker on him. The kids fired up their Wonka app and saw that Dad was right across town.

The kids head out to find and rescue dad, but decide to take a few of Dad’s experimental projects along with them, just in case. The kids enter a warehouse across town and find it to be a very unique place. It’s another lab, filled with high-tech gadgets and screens everywhere!

There’s no sign of Charlie, but the signal on his tracker shows he is close. They continue to look around the lab for clues when a mysterious figure appears from the shadows. It’s an Oompa Loompa, dressed in all black & he does not look happy. He attacks the kids but is quickly stopped in his tracks by Joe, who throws a small piece of candy at the Oompa Loompa, freezing him in place.

The kids proceed through several rooms, each with more Oompa Loompas and traps, but at each turn the kids use one of their father’s experimental candies or sodas to beat the challenge. Eventually they find their father, trapped and …. Well embarrassed.

He had been lured to the building by someone pretending to be an old friend. He got there and was knocked out by some sort of gas, then woke up in his cell. Apparently, the person responsible for his capture had used his phone to text the family.

The kids return to Wonka Chocolate & the shrunken man in the box. Charlie pushed a few buttons on the wall and the man is teleported across the room and resized back to normal.

“Not again!” he yells.

Charlie looks at him and laughs. It turns out that the villain is none other than Mike Teavee, who had held a grudge against Charlie since their “Golden Ticket” days. He thought he should have won and that it wasn’t fair Charlie took over the factory.

Teavee had hoped to steal the secret projects Charlie had been working on and use them to make himself rich and ruin Wonka Chocolates. He had turned a few Oompa Loompas and set up his lab across town. What he didn’t count on was Charlie (prepared for such craziness) and a group of kids armed with the most amazing candy creations ever.