The actor Dwayne Johnson is back in the news for the imminent premiere of ‘Black Adam’, a film called to revolutionize the DC Extended Universe. However, The Rock wasn’t always a big star and during his early years in Hollywood there were several roles he wanted to do that he ultimately didn’t get. One of them was Willie Wonka’s in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.
We all remember Johnny Depp leading that version of the Roald Dahl story directed by Tim Burton. Depp was always the director’s first choice for ‘Big Eyes’, but at the time it was feared that the actor’s busy schedule would prevent him from starring in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. It was then that the filmmaker seriously valued Johnson, becoming the chosen one in the event that Depp was not available.
This is how Johnson explained it.
Johnson himself recalled many years later in an Instagram post how excited he was for Burton to think of him, also admitting that maybe what happened was the best thing that could have happened:
In the early 2000s, iconic director Tim Burton considered me to play Willy Wonka in his remake of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’ I remember thinking, “Oysters, I’m in!” But that was many years ago, when he was just starting out in Hollywood with no global box office strength base or any real acting experience to even get him off the ground. The role, of course, went to Johnny Depp, who was the biggest star in the world at the time.
The rest was history. And I kept going. The fact that Tim had me in mind (even though I’m sure he did for 7 seconds) meant a lot to me as he had just walked into the business with no idea what the future held for me. I will always raise a glass to dreams that don’t come true, because sometimes they are the best thing that never happened.
That yes, to the availability of Depp it was necessary to add another determining factor so that Warner accept that he was the protagonist of ‘Charlie and the chocolate factory’, since the studios had always put problems with Burton when choosing the actor. Then it is true that they ended up giving in, but this time there was not the slightest hit. The reason was the huge success of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’, as it made everyone want to work with Depp…
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