Twice a day, on his way to and from school, little Charlie Bucket had

to walk right past the gates of the factory. And every time he went by
he would begin to walk very, very slowly, and he would hold his nose
high in the air and take long deep sniffs of the gorgeous chocolatey
smell all around him. Oh, how he loved that smell! And oh, how he
wished he could go inside the factory and see what it was like.

- Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Acclaimed director Tim Burton brings his vividly imaginative style to the beloved Roald
Dahl classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, about eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka
(JOHNNY DEPP) and Charlie Bucket (FREDDIE HIGHMORE), a good-hearted boy from a
poor family who lives in the shadow of Wonka’s extraordinary factory.
Most nights in the Bucket home, dinner is a watered-down bowl of cabbage soup, which
young Charlie gladly shares with his mother (HELENA BONHAM CARTER) and father
(NOAH TAYLOR) and both pairs of grandparents. Theirs is a tiny, tumbledown, drafty old
house but it is filled with love. Every night, the last thing Charlie sees from his window is the
great factory, and he drifts off to sleep dreaming about what might be inside.
 2

For nearly fifteen years, no one has seen a single worker going in or coming out of the
factory, or caught a glimpse of Willy Wonka himself, yet, mysteriously, great quantities of
chocolate are still being made and shipped to shops all over the world.
One day Willy Wonka makes a momentous announcement. He will open his famous
factory and reveal “all of its secrets and magic” to five lucky children who find golden tickets
hidden inside five randomly selected Wonka chocolate bars.
Nothing would make Charlie’s family happier than to see him win but the odds are very
much against him as they can only afford to buy one chocolate bar a year, for his birthday.
Indeed, one by one, news breaks around the world about the children finding golden
tickets and Charlie’s hope grows dimmer. First there is gluttonous Augustus Gloop, who thinks
of nothing but stuffing sweets into his mouth all day, followed by spoiled Veruca Salt, who
throws fits if her father doesn’t buy her everything she wants. Next comes Violet Beauregarde, a
champion gum chewer who cares only for the trophies in her display case, and finally surly Mike
Teavee, who’s always showing off how much smarter he is than everyone else.
But then, something wonderful happens. Charlie finds some money on the snowy street
and takes it to the nearest store for a Wonka Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight,
thinking only of how hungry he is and how good it will taste. There, under the wrapper is a flash
of gold. It’s the last ticket. Charlie is going to the factory! His Grandpa Joe (DAVID KELLY)
is so excited by the news that he springs out of bed as if suddenly years younger, remembering a
happier time when he used to work in the factory, before Willy Wonka closed its gates to the
town forever. The family decides that Grandpa Joe should be the one to accompany Charlie on
this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
Once inside, Charlie is dazzled by one amazing sight after another. Wondrous gleaming
contraptions of Wonka’s own invention churn, pop and whistle, producing ever new and
different edible delights. Crews of merry Oompa-Loompas mine mountains of fudge beside a
frothy chocolate waterfall or ride a translucent, spun-sugar, dragon-headed boat down a
chocolate river past crops of twisted candy cane trees and edible mint-sugar grass. Marshmallow
cherry creams grow on shrubs, ripe and sweet. Elsewhere, a hundred trained squirrels on a
hundred tiny stools shell nuts for chocolate bars faster than any machine and Wonka himself
pilots an impossible glass elevator that rockets sideways, slantways and every which way you
can think of through the vast and fantastic factory.
 3

Almost as intriguing as his fanciful inventions is Willy Wonka himself, a gracious but
most unconventional host. He thinks about almost nothing but candy – except, every once in a
while, when he suddenly seems to be thinking about something that happened long ago, that he
can’t quite talk about. It’s been said that Wonka hasn’t stepped outside the factory for years.
Who he truly is and why he has devoted his life to making sweets Charlie can only guess.
Meanwhile, the other children prove to be a rotten bunch, so consumed with themselves
that they scarcely appreciate the wonder of Wonka’s creations. One by one, their greedy,
spoiled, mean-spirited or know-it-all personalities lead them into all kinds of trouble that force
them off the tour before it’s even finished.
When only little Charlie Bucket is left, Willy Wonka reveals the final secret, the absolute
grandest prize of all: the keys to the factory itself. Long isolated from his own family, Wonka
feels it is time to find an heir to his candy empire, someone he can trust to carry on with his life’s
work and so he devised this elaborate contest to select that one special child.
What he never expects is that his act of immeasurable generosity might bring him an
even more valuable gift in return.

Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, a Zanuck
Company / Plan B Production of a Tim Burton Film: Johnny Depp stars in Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, based on the book by Roald Dahl, and also starring Freddie Highmore,
David Kelly, Helena Bonham Carter, Noah Taylor, Missi Pyle, James Fox, with Deep Roy and
Christopher Lee. Directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay by John August, the film is
produced by Brad Grey and Richard D. Zanuck. Patrick McCormick, Felicity Dahl, Michael
Siegel, Graham Burke and Bruce Berman executive produce.
Director of photography is Philippe Rousselot, A.F.C./A.S.C. Production designed by
Alex McDowell. Edited by Chris Lebenzon, A.C.E. Costume designer is Gabriella Pescucci.
Music by Danny Elfman. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will be released worldwide by
Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, and in select territories by
Village Roadshow Pictures. This film is rated PG by the MPAA for “quirky situations, action
and mild language.”
[Link] / AOL: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
 Bringing Roald Dahl’s Classic Story to the Screen

In bringing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to life on screen, producers Brad Grey
and Richard Zanuck had some small idea of what they were getting themselves into. “This was
bigger than anything I’ve been involved with in my entire career, not only as a producer but as a
studio head. It’s bigger in scope, size and imagination,” says Zanuck, an Oscar winner for
Driving Miss Daisy and 1991 recipient of the Academy’s Thalberg Award.
“Here was a book with the potential, just visually, to be absolutely spectacular on film
and we were excited with the idea of being able to produce it on a scale that Roald would have
appreciated, without compromising any of the heart he put into it,” says Grey, currently
Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group and a four time recipient of the
prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, as well as an Emmy and Golden Globe winner for
The Sopranos and a 17-time Emmy nominee during his career as an independent producer. “We
took our time to get the script right and assemble a team that felt the same way we did about it.”
The filmmakers also sought the support and collaboration of Felicity Dahl, Roald’s wife
and the caretaker of his estate since his death in 1990. Says Grey, “Without her blessing, we
wouldn’t have a movie.”
Dahl, an executive producer on the film, acknowledges the scale of the undertaking. “An
adaptation like this is daunting because I don’t think there’s a child in this world who hasn’t read
the story or knows about it. Every child wants to be Charlie.” Delighted at how the creative
team came together and how Roald’s original images were interpreted on a grand scale, she calls
it, “the ideal combination: Roald Dahl, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, absolutely unbeatable and
completely in sync.”
Published in 1964, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory recently celebrated its 40th
anniversary in print. As beloved by children and adults today as it has been throughout the past
four decades, the book has sold over 13 million copies worldwide and been translated into 32
languages. Its enduring popularity indicates how well the author understood, appreciated and
communicated to children. As Grey observes, “He never talked down to his readers or
underestimated their intelligence.”
Johnny Depp, who stars as Willy Wonka, especially appreciates, “the unexpected twists
in Dahl’s writing. You think it’s going in one direction and then it slams you with another
 5

alternative, another route, and makes you think. At its center, Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory is a great morality tale. But there’s also a lot of magic and fun.”
Although hugely popular with children, the consensus of the book’s adult fans is that,
most definitely, “it’s more than a children’s book,” says Zanuck. “It’s a wild ride, certainly, a
fun-house candy fantasyland, but it has deeper emotional implications. The character of Wonka,
who he is and who he becomes at the end of the story through his connection with young
Charlie, is very moving. It’s a fantasy that touches everyone.”
When it came time to select a director, Tim Burton was ideal choice. “When you look at
his body of work, there’s a running theme of intelligence and whimsy that’s perfectly suited for a
story like this,” says Grey. “Like Dahl, he never underestimates the sophistication of his
audience. In our first conversations it was clear that Tim was a fan and wanted to be as faithful
to the book as possible, which was right in sync with how we felt.”
“One of the interesting aspects of the book is that it’s so vivid in mood and feeling and so
specific, yet it still leaves room for interpretation,” Burton believes. “It leaves room for your
own imagination, which, I think, is one of Dahl’s strengths as a storyteller.
“Some adults forget what it was like to be a kid. Roald didn’t,” Burton continues. “So
you have characters that remind you of people in your own life and kids you went to school with,
but at the same time it harkens back to age-old archetypes of mythology and fairy tales. It’s a
mix of emotion and humor and adventure that’s absolutely timeless and I think that’s why it
stays with you. He remembers vividly what it was like to be that age but he also layers his work
with an adult perspective. That’s why you can revisit this book at any time and get different
things from it no matter what your age.”
Burton worked previously with Felicity Dahl when he produced the 1996 animated
fantasy adventure James and the Giant Peach, adapted from another of Roald’s books, and she
was especially pleased when he committed to Charlie. She sees in him some reflections of her
late husband’s unique “creativity and sense of humor,” adding that, “I wish Roald was here to
work on it with Tim, because they would have been brilliant together.”
“What we have,” says Zanuck,” is a blending of these two genius minds. Tim has gone
back to the specifics of the author’s intent and given his own extraordinary spin to it.”
Early in pre-production, Burton visited the Dahl home and looked inside the spare,
unheated workroom where Roald did all of his writing. Away from the noise and bustle of the
 6

house, it was his private no-frills sanctuary. Burton was amazed to realize how closely his
designs for Charlie Bucket’s ramshackle house resembled this structure and Felicity Dahl
confirmed it was very likely the author’s inspiration for the Bucket home. Moved by the
experience, Burton says, “It made me feel like we were definitely on the same wavelength. It
was uncanny how similar the two structures were. Roald even used rolled-up pieces of
cardboard to prop together a makeshift desk for himself. I never had the opportunity to meet the
man, but just through the work I feel some kind of connection with him.”
Screenwriter John August (Big Fish) has his own special connection with Roald Dahl.
“When I was in the third grade,” he recalls, “we had to write a letter to a famous person.
Nearly everyone chose Jimmy Carter, who was the president then, but I chose Roald Dahl
because my favorite book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Incredibly, I got back a
postcard from him, from England. I was ten years old and it was my first contact with an author.
That was one of the things that inspired me to become a writer. So it was a great honor and
responsibility for me to adapt this book into a movie.”
What touches August most about the story is that, “even though Charlie is very poor, and
he doesn’t have much to eat, he lives in a little house with all of the people that he loves –
mother, father, and both sets of grandparents. That’s a remarkable gift that any kid would be
lucky to have.”
Taking his cue both from the book and the filmmakers, August maintained the story’s
non-specific time or place. “It’s timeless,” states Grey. “It doesn’t matter if it’s today or 40
years ago. A message that suggests being true to yourself and to other people, and treating others
as you would like to be treated – the golden rule – is never outdated.”
Burton and August added a nuance to the Wonka character by offering a glimpse into his
own childhood. In flashbacks, while the children, accompanied by one parent each (or in
Charlie’s case, his grandfather) tour the factory, Willy revisits crucial moments from his past and
remembers conversations with his own stern father, town dentist Dr. Wilbur Wonka. We see the
overly protective Wonka Sr. forbid his son to eat sweets, and imagine how young Willy’s
unrequited longing for a taste of chocolate became a lifelong fascination that grew into the
Wonka candy empire.
“Where the book allows room for possibility and the reader’s interpretation,” explains
Burton, “we felt the film needed to provide some framework in the case of Wonka’s eccentricity,
 7

to offer some possibility of why he is the way he is without delving too deeply into it. Why is he
behaving this way and what’s behind it?”
Felicity Dahl concurs, noting that, “all books have to be changed a bit in making a film.
The important thing is that the alterations enhance the story rather than detract from it, and I
believe that’s what Tim has done here. When you choose someone like Tim to make a film, you
choose him for his creative ability so you have to give him your trust.”
During the tour, Charlie’s innocent question about whether or not Wonka remembers his
first taste of candy stirs deeply buried feelings in the famous chocolatier. When he later offers
Charlie the grandest prize of all – the factory itself with all its wonders – and Charlie refuses to
accept if it means leaving his family behind, it gives Wonka pause. Maybe he’s underestimated
the value of family. Maybe Charlie, who is always a little hungry and lives in a broken-down
hovel, has something better than money and chocolate.
“It’s a beautifully simple message, in this world where people are always striving after
material things and success,” says Burton. “There are material things and then there are the
emotional and spiritual. Sometimes the most important things are the simplest.”

Casting Willy Wonka, Charlie Bucket and the Bucket Family

When Tim Burton proposed the role of Willy Wonka to his friend and frequent
collaborator, two-time Oscar nominee Johnny Depp, he was barely able to get the words out. As
Depp relates the conversation, “We were having dinner and he said, ‘I want to talk to you about
something. You know that story, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Well, I’m going to do it
and I’m wondering if you’d want to play….’ and I couldn’t even wait for him to finish the
sentence. I said, ‘I’m in. Absolutely. I’m there.’ No question about it.”
“To be chosen to play Willy Wonka in itself a great honor,” says Depp, a long-time fan
of Dahl’s work, “but to be chosen by Tim Burton is double, triple the honor. His vision is
always amazing, beyond anything you expect. Just the fact that he was involved meant I didn’t
need to see a script before committing. If Tim wanted to shoot 18 million feet of film of me
staring into a light bulb and I couldn’t blink for three months, I’d do it.”
Before long the two were poring over Burton’s preliminary sketches, discussing Wonka’s
look and the themes of the story, falling into a familiar creative rhythm that began when the
 8

director cast Depp as the lead in the 1990 poignant fantasy Edward Scissorhands. They
subsequently re-teamed for the critically acclaimed Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow and are
currently working together on the stop-motion animated feature Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.
“Johnny is a great character actor in many ways,” says Burton – “a character actor in the
form of a leading man. That’s what struck me about him from the very beginning and it’s what
makes him such an intriguing actor – the fact that he’s not necessarily interested in his image but
more in becoming a character and trying different things. He’s willing to take risks. Each time I
work with him he’s something different.”
“He’s a tremendously insightful actor,” adds Grey. “He came to the project with respect
for the book and also a sense of how he could do something very special with this character. I
can’t think of anyone we’d rather have in the role. Sometimes the right magical combination
comes together and I believe that’s what we have here: Roald, Tim, and Johnny.”
Above all, Depp approached the role with “a great sense of affection for Wonka.”
Forced to open his beloved factory for the first time in 15 years to find an heir, Wonka is
uncomfortable with the unfamiliar human contact. As Depp suggests, “he puts on his game face
in front of people but underneath he has a great anxiety about actual contact or closeness. I
believe he’s a germophobe, which is why he wears gloves, and in addition to the gloves it’s as if
he’s wearing a mask. There are moments during the tour when we catch Wonka acting, and
acting badly, literally reading off cue cards. I don’t think he really wants to spend any time with
these people. I think he’s struggling, from the first second, to put on an act for them and keep a
smile.
“At the same time,” Depp continues, “a part of him is genuinely excited about being the
grand showman, like P.T. Barnum, pointing out everything he’s created and saying, ‘hey, look at
this! Look what I’ve done, isn’t this wonderful?’”
“Willy Wonka is an eccentric,” notes Zanuck. “He’s odd, he’s funny, he’s aloof yet
terribly vulnerable; it’s an interesting composite, both childlike and deep at the same time. No
other actor could give this character the kind of depth, range and spin it requires. Johnny has an
incredible gift.”
Burton and Depp worked with Academy Award-winning costume designer Gabriella
Pescucci (The Age of Innocence, Van Helsing) to arrive at precisely the right look for Wonka,
which resulted in a total of 10 different plush jackets and overcoats. In keeping with the timeless
 9

quality of Dahl’s tale, wardrobe was, Pescucci says, “contemporary, but with some old-world
styling.”
Regarding Wonka’s hair and other small but significant details, Depp made some
deliberate choices. “The hair was one of those elements I saw clearly very early on,” he says.
“The top hat was easy, because that came right from the Quentin Blake drawings, but the hair I
imagined as a kind of Prince Valiant do, high bangs and a bob, extreme and very unflattering but
something that Wonka probably thinks is cool because he’s been locked away for such a long
time and doesn’t know any better, like the outdated slang he uses.”
Based on the book’s description of Wonka’s sparkling eyes, Depp selected a pair of
violet-tinted contact lenses for an effective dimension of color, and drawing from the story of
Wonka’s childhood orthodontia, decided he should flash remarkably perfect teeth. Add to that a
distinctly pale skin tone from years of living indoors and an image of Wonka emerges as an
extraordinary figure of outlandish but expensive tastes, with a style of speech and presentation as
unique as his lifestyle.
As Pescucci exclaims in her native Italian, “Willy Wonka é la persona fantastica!”
Starring as Charlie is Freddie Highmore, who rejoins Depp after sharing the screen with
him in 2004’s acclaimed drama Finding Neverland. Twelve years old when Charlie began
production, Highmore had already carried leading roles in the family films Five Children and It
and Two Brothers, and portrayed young King Arthur in the TNT miniseries The Mists of Avalon.
As Grey attests, “He brings great emotion to the role, but you don’t see any of the strings
– you don’t see him working. He really is well beyond his years to have that kind of skill.”
Expressing the consensus of opinion from all who have worked with him, Burton marvels
at how “completely natural and genuine” the young actor is. “He has such gravity, without ever
being false, which is very difficult to do, even for an adult actor. He has the ability to convey
emotion without speaking or trying too hard. That’s not something that a director can tell
someone to do; they either have it or they don’t. This is why casting Charlie was crucial.”
To Highmore, Charlie’s appeal is based on his being “a normal boy. He doesn’t have any
special talents or superior qualities. In fact, he doesn’t have much of anything at all, except for
his family, but he’s always thoughtful and really nice to everyone. So when his wish comes true
and he goes to the factory, I think people are happy for him because he’s so deserving.”
 10

In that respect, says Zanuck, “Freddie conveys an air of purity and goodness” – yet, he
doesn’t take it too far. “Goodness can be so boring on screen,” quips Helena Bonham Carter,
who first worked with Highmore in the 1999 British comedy Women Talking Dirty.
“Essentially, Charlie’s a good soul with the right values. He’s not spoiled, which sets him apart
from the other four children. But what’s great about Freddie is that he doesn’t make Charlie a
drippy boy, which is always the danger with a role like this.”
As Charlie’s home is dominated by the Wonka factory looming just behind it, so his
imagination is dominated by thoughts of what might be inside. Still, unlike his privileged
companions on the tour, he is content with his life as it is. Says Highmore, “Even though he has
cabbage soup every night and wears a sweater that’s threadbare, Charlie has a loving family. He
seems to have nothing, but he’s actually got everything already.”
When Charlie comes home with the precious golden ticket it revitalizes old Grandpa Joe,
played by Waking Ned Devine’s David Kelly. “You can see it in his walk, you can see it in his
talk,” says Zanuck. “Grandpa Joe used to work in the factory years ago before Wonka shut the
town out, and those were his glory days. The opportunity to get back into the factory literally
gets him out of bed and makes him come alive again.”
“When David walked in, that was it,” Burton recalls. “He was Grandpa Joe. What an
amazing actor, and what a deeply expressive face, like a silent movie character.”
Kelly appreciates how Dahl highlighted the special relationship between Charlie and his
grandfather, noting that the author saw value in the whole spectrum of age. Not having had the
good fortune to know his own grandparents, who died before he was born, the actor enjoys the
connection his children have with his parents, and asks, “Is there anybody in the world who
doesn’t feel a very special grace for their grandparents?”
Kelly compares the production to “being inside Tim Burton’s head, which is a rewarding
place to be. The man is a standard-setter, truly brilliant. When people asked what I did, I’d say
‘well, I was being rowed by 50 Oompa-Loompas in a pink candy boat down a chocolate river
with Johnny Depp.’ The sets are wonderful – hand-painted, handmade, the kind you rarely see
anymore. Going to work every day was endlessly jaw-dropping and magical.”
Cast as Charlie’s loving parents are Helena Bonham Carter and Noah Taylor, both of
whom, says Burton, “shine in relatively small roles that bring warmth and credibility to Charlie’s
family unit. The house and their living conditions are so extreme, almost surreal, that without
 11

the right actors it just wouldn’t have worked. We were lucky to have Noah and Helena; they
truly made it feel like a real family.”
Bonham Carter, whose starring role in the 1997 romantic drama The Wings of the Dove
earned both Oscar and BAFTA nominations, describes the emotional balance she and Taylor
keep as Mother and Father Bucket. “Like Grandpa Joe,” she says, “Charlie’s parents are
accustomed to disappointment. We’ve had a hard time with life, used to being the underdogs, so
when the golden ticket contest is announced of course we haven’t the slightest expectation that
Charlie has a chance of winning. The odds are tiny. We adore our son and don’t want him to be
hurt so we try not to get his hopes up. He’s always been our main source of joy but when he
finds the ticket, suddenly, he becomes the embodiment of hope and life and future for the whole
family.”
Taylor (Shine, Almost Famous, The Life Aquatic) sees Mr. Bucket as “not the kind of
man you’d call successful. He’s probably from a long line of people who aren’t particularly rich
or clever or well-connected, but he’s clever enough to keep his family together and bring up a
sweet child, and that, I think, is one of the greater accomplishments you can have in life.”
For Taylor, Dahl’s message, as illustrated by the Bucket family, is that, “you don’t need
money or status to be a good person.” Yet, “it’s not the sort of moral that’s thrust down your
throat; rather, he allows you to discover it for yourself.”

The Four Rotten Children

Cast as the four children who join Charlie on the factory tour are AnnaSophia Robb as
Violet Beauregarde, Jordan Fry as Mike Teavee, Julia Winter as Veruca Salt and Philip Wiegratz
as Augustus Gloop. Like their fictional counterparts who vie for a Golden Ticket to Wonka’s
factory in a global contest, the four talented young actors of varying backgrounds and experience
were chosen from an international pool.
We’re not saying they’re bad, these four Golden Ticket winners, but as Zanuck
diplomatically puts it, “they’re not the kind of children you’d be proud to call your own.”
Violet Beauregarde is a ferociously competitive and self-assured little hellion who boasts
of a roomful of trophies back home and is currently working on the world’s record for non-stop
gum-chewing. Ignoring Wonka’s warning, she seizes a piece of experimental chewing gum with
 12

a blueberry flavor from the Inventing Room and within moments is turned blue and blows up
like a giant blueberry-hued beach ball and must be removed to the Juicing Room. Violet is
played by 11-year-old American AnnaSophia Robb, who recently starred in Wayne Wang’s
family feature Because of Winn-Dixie and The WB’s 2004 television movie Samantha: An
American Girl Holiday.
Robb says her Charlie experience “made me feel like a little part of history because
everyone loves the book so much. Being on set was like a fantasy too, having a rooms full of
candy that you get to play in and eat. Really cool.” Her preparation for the role included martial
arts training with teacher and stunt professional Eunice Huthart, for an introductory scene in
which Violet is seen mercilessly knocking down her rivals in a karate competition.
Know-it-all video game addict Mike Teavee, played by 12-year-old American Jordan
Fry, scoffs rudely at another of Wonka’s inventions, an attempt to transport a chocolate bar via
electromagnetic waves through a television screen. Teavee interrupts the experiment by
inserting himself into the middle of it with some very unexpected results.
Newcomer Fry happily found himself flying across the set on wires for the sequence.
“The hardest part,” declares stunt coordinator Jim Dowdall, “was keeping him from laughing in
sheer delight at the experience because in the scene he’s supposed to appear rather frightened
and unsettled.”
Gluttonous Augustus Gloop is unable to resist the lure of the factory’s luscious chocolate
river and breaks from the tour to get taste of it, despite cautions from his mother and Wonka. He
promptly falls in, mouth-first, and is sucked up through an intake pipe that transports the
chocolate to other parts of the factory.
Gloop marks the professional acting debut of 12-year-old German-born Philip Wiegratz,
who wore a fitted prosthetic body suit and calves for the role of the greedy youngster. Even
more of a challenge, says Dowdall, was that “Philip couldn’t swim when he came to us. We had
to get into our wetsuits and show him how to do it, but he learned very quickly, even with the
encumbrance of all that padding.”
Meanwhile, hopelessly spoiled Veruca Salt has problems of her own. Upon seeing
Wonka’s squirrels at work in the nut room she demands to have one and storms the assembly
line. The squirrels examine her as they evaluate all nuts, determine she is a bad nut and dispatch
her down the garbage chute with the other rejects. Veruca is played by 12-year-old Londoner
 13

Julia Winter, a member of the children’s drama group Allsorts Drama, in her professional acting
debut.
“I couldn’t get the hang of lying on the floor fighting off the squirrels so Tim lay down
on the floor next to me and demonstrated,” Winter offers. “There we were, both of us, kicking
our legs and screaming at the top of our lungs, swatting away imaginary squirrels. It was great
fun and we must have looked absolutely ridiculous.”
The parents of these beastly children represent the worst imaginable child-rearing skills,
hilariously evident as they chaperone their horrible little brats through the factory.
Missi Pyle (Big Fish, Dodgeball, Bringing Down the House) as Mrs. Beauregarde
appears more manager and coach than mother to young Violet, an obnoxious girl bent on
winning every conceivable prize and contest in the world. “Mrs. Beauregarde wants her
daughter to have everything she didn’t,” says Pyle. “A self-proclaimed winner, she has instilled
in Violet her own competitive sprit to the exclusion of any other thought. The two of them arrive
at the factory – in matching outfits, of course – fully expecting to go home with the grand prize,”
whatever it may be.
Veteran actor of both film and television, BAFTA Award nominee James Fox (A Passage
to India) stars as the beleaguered Mr. Salt, father to the colossally spoiled Veruca, a girl with no
thought for anyone or anything but herself. “He’s very anxious that his daughter have everything
she wants,” says Fox, who slyly describes Veruca Salt as “lovable, adorable, sweet and talented,
the perfect child,” before adding, “as long as her father meets her demands. Immediately. If he
doesn’t, she’ll scream until he does.”
Fox believes the tour ultimately proves beneficial for all the children. The lessons meted
out to the rude, selfish and inconsiderate are quite valuable, “and Wonka serves somewhat as a
judge. He discerns the children’s motives and their characters and he wants to change and
correct them. He wants to make them better people.”
Adam Godley (Love Actually, Around the World in 80 Days) as Mr. Teavee and
Franziska Troegner (nominated for the German Film Award in her native country for 2001’s
Heidi M) as Mrs. Gloop fare no better. Mr. Teavee is sadly not immune to his son’s sarcastic
bullying and poor Mrs. Gloop seems not only unable, but uninterested in controlling Augustus’
rampant gorging.
 14

The Oompa-Loompas and Dr. Wonka

Deep Roy, whom Burton appropriately calls “the hardest-working man in show
business,” took on the daunting task of starring as an entire community of Oompa-Loompas, the
factory’s sole work force. Rescued by Willy Wonka from their harsh life in distant Loompaland,
they now cheerfully live and work inside its walls and feast on their favorite food: cocoa beans.
Having worked with Burton in Planet of the Apes and Big Fish, Roy was happy to renew
the association when contacted about the part. But there was a catch, as the actor relates with a
laugh. “The first time Tim mentioned the idea he said ‘There will be only one Oompa-Loompa
and it’s going to be you. We’re going to create hundreds from you.’ Then he thought perhaps I
would be doing as many as five in close-up. The next time I saw him in London, five had
become nineteen! In the end, it didn’t matter to me if it was 19 or 20 or 50. It’s been an
absolute blast.”
The production team managed to populate the screen with scores of the diminutive and
industrious factory workers through motion and facial capture technology, creating duplicate yet
individual Oompa-Loompas in computer image from Roy’s multiple performances and then
scaling them down to size. For Roy, it meant months of rehearsal and choreography. If a scene
called for numerous Oompas to join in a narrative song and dance, Roy would perform the steps
for all of them, each from a slightly different starting mark and each with subtle distinctions of
expression and movement, so that when the images were joined he became an entire troupe.
“The audience may think it’s all computer-generated,” says Roy, “but that’s not the case.
If you see 20 Oompas, I did all 20 performances.”
Additionally, state-of-the-art photo-realistic and animatronic Oompas were modeled from
Roy to supplement the action and serve as physical focal points in the scenes.
“Deep did a heroic amount of work on this,” Burton acknowledges. “Considering how to
present the Oompa-Loompas there were a number of possibilities, one of which was full
computer animation, but I think this was the way to go, to give it that important human element
and keep it true to the spirit of the book.”
Bringing to life the role of Willy’s father, the dentist Dr. Wilbur Wonka, is Christopher
Lee, conjured up by Willy’s memory in a series of flashbacks to his childhood. Well-respected
worldwide, the British actor’s career spans nearly 60 years, first catching fire with the
 15

memorable Hammer horror films in the 1950s (of which Burton was an avid fan) and
encompassing a wide range of feature and television productions including starring roles in the
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars sagas and 1998’s critically acclaimed Jinnah.
Lee sees the elder Wonka as “not a bad father, certainly, just overly stern and unable to
show his love.” Dr. Wonka was acutely concerned with oral hygiene and overly protective of his
son’s teeth, to the extent that he forbade the youngster from eating sweets. “It’s not exactly
parental abuse,” Lee suggests, “as he does it for the best of motives. But he’s very strict and
therefore comes across as a rather alarming figure to a little boy.”
“Not only is he a great actor, whose work I grew up watching and admiring,” says
Burton, “but Christopher Lee is simply a powerful presence in every sense of the word.” As
screenwriter John August avows, “He’s completely intimidating in just the right way.”
Lee, who worked with Burton and his Charlie co-star Johnny Depp on Sleepy Hollow and
re-teams with them on the upcoming Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, says, “Tim is a director of vast
enthusiasm. It comes at you in waves of encouragement from behind the camera. He’s
amazingly inventive and has a brilliant mind.”
In fact, Burton was so tirelessly active on the set and covered so much ground each day
that Helena Bonham Carter gave him a pedometer as a joke. “She wanted to see how many steps
he took in a day,” says Freddie Highmore, who cannot recall the official count but says “it turned
out he didn’t need to go to the gym because he walks enough at work.”

Building Wonka’s World: Inspired Production Design and State-of-the-Art Practical &
Virtual Effects Combine for an Unparalleled Atmosphere of Wonder

Once inside the factory walls, offers Zanuck, “the children discover an entire world
complete with a chocolate waterfall and chocolate river, edible trees and unbelievable machinery
that only a mind such as Roald Dahl, interpreted by a mind such as Tim Burton, could possibly
imagine. It’s fantasy, it’s fun, it’s completely outrageous and awe-inspiring. You don’t know
where to look first.”
In creating the landscape of Wonka’s world, the filmmakers began at the source, to tap
into, as Burton describes, “the textural, visceral quality of Dahl’s images and the scope. We tried
to keep as true to the book as possible in creating specific places like the nut room and the TV
 16

room. Still, there is a lot of room for interpretation, which is the wonderful thing about doing an
adaptation like this. Each room has its own flavor and possibilities.
“Instead of relying too much on blue or green screen effects we tried to build as much of
the settings as possible,” the director continues. “We built most of the sets at 360 degrees so the
actors are really enveloped in the environment.”
It was a huge compliment to the production when Felicity Dahl first stepped onto the
Pinewood soundstages to examine the work in progress and enthusiastically declared, “it’s
magical! I know that if Roald had seen it, he would have loved it. He would have said this is
exactly what he had in mind.”
What Dahl had in mind proved no small task to construct. His Chocolate Factory
contained cavernous rooms wherein whole environments were housed, like the one in which the
Oompa-Loompas both worked and lived beside a chocolate waterfall and flowing chocolate
river, where candy cane trees grew, giant peapods produced Wonka gobstoppers and even the
grass was edible. Unwieldy one-of-a-kind machinery pumped out Wonka’s fanciful confections
while in other rooms equally outlandish contraptions were engaged in experiments to create even
more exotic and delicious candies. Traveling through the factory meant navigating the river in a
translucent boat of spun pink sugar or climbing aboard a glass elevator that sped not only up and
down but, as the text declares, “sideways and longways and slantways and any other way you
can think of,” including blasting up through the roof at rocket speed.
Production utilized seven stages and much of the back lot at Pinewood Studios in the UK,
including the famous James Bond stage, which houses one of the largest soundstage pools in the
world. Says Production Designer Alex McDowell (Art Directors Guild Award winner for The
Terminal and nominee for Minority Report; Fight Club, The Crow), “We pretty much took over
the studio lot – lock, stock and barrel.”
Because Burton preferred to accomplish as much as possible with practical effects, a
great deal of what appears on screen was created physically with prosthetic and special effects
coordinated by Special Effects Supervisor Joss Williams, whose previous collaboration with
Burton, Sleepy Hollow, earned him a BAFTA nomination. “When those reached their natural
limitations, we took over in the digital realm,” says Visual Effects Supervisor Nick Davis (AFI
and BAFTA nominee for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), who oversaw the integration of
advanced motion capture technology and CGI “for anything that could not be achieved
 17

practically on set. It was a collaborative effort among multiple departments and it all began with
Tim, who had all these ideas and kept producing drawings to show us what he wanted.”
Early pre-planning and ongoing communication were key, since images morphed
instantly from one process to another and back again in the same scene. Sets were built and used
simultaneously on the back lot, in the computer and in 24-scale miniature models. “I spent a lot
of time in pre-production working with conceptual artists and Nick Davis, so that everything was
cohesive,” says McDowell. “From a design standpoint, there’s no difference between a physical
and a virtual set and Charlie was a film that required a total design sensibility, from Oompa-
Loompa hand props to the vast CG world that the boat and elevator travel through.”
Citing the example of the spun-sugar boat, he says, “the boat travels from the chocolate
river into a white tunnel rapids ride. It’s a physical entity in the chocolate room but inside the
tunnel that’s a fully CG environment. The boat goes onto a gimbal platform and is shot against a
blue screen. It also has to be replicated and made in CGI. You have actors in the physical boat
with prosthetic Oompas and CG actors with scaled-down Oompa-size CG versions of Deep Roy
at the oars in the CG boat. I spent a couple months in close collaboration with the CG and
miniatures companies, designing alongside the 3D and physical model makers.”
The glass elevator posed design challenges of its own, as McDowell outlines. “It has to
be self-supporting, with doors that open and close and it has to be strong enough to hang from a
rig and crash through a set. It has to fly. But how to shoot it? How do you put a camera into a
glass elevator?” Ultimately, adds Davis, “The elevator was a mixture of practical pieces on rigs
or completely CG elevators with CG characters inside, depending upon the complexity of the
shot. We used either hand-held cameras on cranes, with the actors inside, or motion control
cameras where we could have the elevator moving up or falling 30 feet in the air. Sometimes it
was actors standing on blue boxes and we added the elevator around them afterwards, in post.”
Issues of lighting the unusually vivid environment drew Oscar-winning cinematographer
Philippe Rousselot (A River Runs Through It) into pre-planning discussions as well, as Davis
describes. “Tim wanted vibrant lighting, primary colors. Turns out, bright and colored lights
don’t mix well with chocolate. It was tough for us to keep the chocolate from turning grey or the
boat from turning into a muddy mess. It was a real balancing act, to focus white light on some
things while not detracting from the primary-colored walls and other props. Philippe and his
 18

team worked with us in pre-production and we worked out the lighting scheme one sequence at a
time. Some of it could be done digitally and some had to be lamps on stage.”

The Chocolate River

“The most important thing Tim said about the chocolate river,” recalls Joss Williams,
was “‘make it look good enough to eat,’ and that’s how we approached it, to look as yummy as
possible.”
For the effects supervisor, that meant managing “viscosity, looks, color testing and safety
issues,” not to mention logistics, quantity, transportation and storage.
The option of making the chocolate off-site and bringing it in via tanker was quickly
dismissed, as calculations estimated a need for 40 tanker trucks. It seemed a better plan to
manufacture and store the stuff on site. As for mixing it, conventional cement mixers proved
inadequate. They needed a vessel that could mix three or four tons at a time, which they found,
ironically, in the form of commercial vats designed for mixing toothpaste, that could blend as
many as 12 tons at a time and store 20,000.
Altogether, production required a constant supply of more than 200,000 gallons of
flowing chocolate; approximately 32,000 for the waterfall and 170,000 for the river, which
measures 180 feet long by 25-to-40-feet wide, and is nearly 3 feet at its deepest point.
Without revealing the exact recipe, Williams acknowledges experimenting with mixtures
of water and dietary cellulose, with various food dyes to achieve the right look and texture.
“Color to the eye is different than color on film,” he explains, “so we tested through a whole
pattern of shades to get exactly the right one.” Once prepared, the mixture was constantly
cleaned and tested daily by a local laboratory “to make sure it was safe for the company to work
with and eat.” Only half-joking, he adds, “we had to keep the bugs down to an acceptable level.
There’s about as many bugs in it as you’d find in an airline sandwich.”
For the scene in which Augustus Gloop tumbles into the chocolate river and is
subsequently sucked up through an intake pipe to another part of the factory, young Philip
Wiegratz was slowly conditioned to the unusual sensation of floundering in melted chocolate.
“We started Philip in a small tank in the workshop” says Williams. “Then we tested him in the
fat suit that he wears as Augustus; it couldn’t be too buoyant or he’d float, and it couldn’t absorb
 19

the mixture and become an enormous weight around him. Probably worst of all, from his
perspective, was that once this stuff gets into your ears you can’t hear very well.”
As the scene progresses where the camera cannot follow, the practical set gives way to a
CG rendering of events, with a virtual Gloop being squeezed into the narrow space and then spat
upwards through the tube – all of which involved Nick Davis and his team with their own issues
of color and viscosity, not to mention duplicating “liquid dynamics” in the computer.
Taking a big-picture approach, Davis maintains that, “software can help you break down
the physics. You can plug in the known parameters – melt speeds, drip speeds, pour speeds,
mass and weight, which helps a lot. But at the end of the day there’s always a human, artistic
side to it, where you just look at it and say ‘hmmm, that’s too fast’ or ‘that’s too shiny.’”

The Oompa-Loompas
Bringing the Oompas to life involved the full cooperative effort of all the effects artists
on the film, but it all began with one man, the Oompa-Loompa prototype: Deep Roy.
If five, six or 20 Oompa-Loompas appear in a scene, Roy played all of them. In separate
takes, and from different starting marks, he would act out each single part on the motion capture
stage, whereby his body and facial movements were recorded in the computer. If the scene was
one in which the Oompa-Loompas join to dance and sing a number about the fate of each
wayward child on the tour, the entire routine would be meticulously choreographed for months
to composer Danny Elfman’s music. Then Roy would perform the steps from each individual
spot on the line, subtly adjusting his gestures and expressions from one to the next so that when
the collection of images were later joined together onscreen he would have created an entire
troupe.
“I think of it as doing nineteen second takes,” offers Roy, whose extensive training for
the roles included daily pilates sessions and dance classes. “The most challenging part was trying
to remember my position from one performance to the next, counting in my head and
remembering at what point to turn or where to look. It was a lot of rehearsing.”
“This was extremely tricky, partly just for the volume of shots it created,” says Chas
Jarrett, Visual Effects Supervisor of The Moving Picture Company, one of the companies that
joined the production team to work on Oompa-Loompa footage and contributed nearly 500 shots.
“Although effectively the Oompas look alike, we’ve slightly altered the facial tones of each.
 20

Their hairstyles may be a little different and each performance is slightly varied from one
character to another.”
What the relatively new facial-capture process offers over standard animation, Jarrett
believes, “is subtleties around the eyes and mouth shapes, the way the jaw moves and the skin
stretches around the nostrils when he speaks. Those are the kinds of details that animators find
most difficult to recreate. And here we get it free, with Deep’s performance.”
As if that wasn’t complicated enough, the Oompa-Loompas are only two-and-a-half feet
high, so Deep Roy’s virtual image had to be proportionately reduced. This wouldn’t be a
problem if he played his scenes solo but the Oompa-Loompas are in nearly every frame of the
film and interact with all the human characters in various settings.
To illustrate how complicated it was just keeping track of the scale issue, Alex McDowell
offers an impromptu checklist that sounds like one half of an Abbott and Costello routine: “Our
environments had to be in two different scales. We had to be constantly aware of Oompa-
Loompa scale, which is 30 inches high. Hand tools, controls, pathways and architecture had to
conform to Oompa height. A lot of the time that’s Deep Roy, who is actually twice that height.
So there’s Oompa scale and Deep Roy scale. Oompa scale is sometimes the same as human
scale, with tiny props that stay tiny in human scale but appear larger in Deep Roy scale.
Sometimes you have Deep sitting in a human chair so you build a double-size chair for him so he
appears half-size to humans; sometimes Deep is in the Oompa environment in which case you
build a set for Deep, at his scale, and a half-size set for Willy Wonka so that he appears large in
the Oompa environment. The terminology alone is hard to get a handle on.”
Partly to provide a scale reference point in some scenes as well as a focal point and
something for the actors to react to, the production enlisted animatronics and prosthetic makeup
effects specialist Neal Scanlan, of Neal Scanlan Studio, an Oscar winner for his work on Babe.
“Our goal,” says Scanlan, “was to make a photo-realistic Oompa-Loompa.”
He and his team assembled five completely motorized puppets, one for each room in the
factory. Made from molds taken from an original sculpted model, the puppets were covered with
painted silicone skin, hair-punched, and fitted with highly reflective blown-glass eyes. Their
fiberglass skulls accommodated motors to realistically move their eyes and cheeks. Remote-
controlled rods beneath their chests turned and moved their heads, necks and limbs.
 21

The creations were so lifelike that even Roy himself was taken aback upon first seeing
them. “I was truly amazed,” the actor recalls. “They can talk, they can move their eyes and
mouths. I thought, hey, am I going to lose my job here? Maybe they can just use the puppets.”
Another 15 puppets were designed full-bodied and pose-able but lacked internal
mechanization and gained their illusion of motion through attachment to other moving props,
such as the motorized oars on the spun-sugar boat.

The Squirrels
In his own fantastic yet logical fashion, Wonka understands that the world’s greatest
experts on the quality of nutmeats are squirrels. No other creature on earth and certainly no man
or machine could pick out good nuts from bad with such single-minded accuracy and speed.
So, as Wonka’s tour reaches the nut-sorting room the children see 100 of the captivating
rodents perched on tiny stools, intently engaged in doing what they do best. Evaluating each nut
by scent and sound, they nimbly shell the good ones and place the meat onto a conveyor belt
while tossing the bad ones over their shoulders into a giant trash chute.
Like Wonka, Tim Burton also wanted the real thing – live, trained squirrels.
“When I found out what was involved, it was a bit overwhelming,” says Senior Animal
Trainer Mike Alexander, of Birds & Animals Unlimited. Alexander was happy to re-team with
Burton following his successful stint as a chimpanzee wrangler on Planet of the Apes, but
admits, “squirrels can be very tough, and training 100 of them was inconceivable.”
Ultimately, the animals on screen were an artful amalgamation of skillfully crafted
animatronics plus some CG and multiple images along with 40 individual, rambunctious and
very real squirrels to set the standard and lead the animal action.
Alexander’s team of four trainers (under the watchful eye of a Humane Society rep),
spent 19 weeks with their lively charges, providing mostly one-on-one attention. Some of the
animals came from private homes in the UK while the majority were recruited from local rescue
shelters. Once rescued, squirrels cannot be released to the wild, by law, for their own protection,
so those that were not returned to their owners when filming wrapped were adopted by Birds &
Animals Unlimited, where they will be cared for until possibly called for another job.
While undeniably intelligent and, Alexander attests, “incredibly photogenic,” squirrels
are notoriously difficult to handle. Independent and unpredictable, “they’re not necessarily good
 22

at doing specific, intricate things,” he says. “They don’t like to sit still. They’re hard to keep in
one place. The first couple of weeks were spent in just getting the animals to come out of their
crates and sit with us, nevermind any of the things they were supposed to do.
“We took baby steps,” he continues. “After they were comfortable sitting with us we
introduced them to the props. We taught them to pick up a nut and put it into a metal bowl,
which is not what they’d do in the movie but once they got the idea of picking the nut up and
putting it into a bowl we could change the bowl to a conveyer belt. Once they grasped the basic
concepts, they began to learn faster and things started coming together.”
Each squirrel had a name and it wasn’t long before individual personalities and talents
emerged. “All of them are capable of learning, but some are naturally better at certain things
than others,” says Alexander. “We found that some of them had no interest at all in picking up
the nut, while others, once they had it, refused to let it go. Those that didn’t lend themselves to
being ‘good nut squirrels’ were moved to a second group, being trained to run across the floor
toward Veruca. Our smartest squirrels do the nut gag.”
There was a limit to what the real squirrels could do, by their nature or in deference to
the potential danger of a scene. In those cases, animatronic or CG troops were called in.
“Tim wanted to use live squirrels as much as possible,” notes Nick Davis. “But some
actions they are just not physically able to do, for example, throwing nuts over their shoulders.
Physiologically, their bodies don’t work that way. Our job was to make the CGI squirrels as
realistic as possible, to interact with humans in a kind of anthropomorphic way and yet remain
absolutely true to their animal nature. Squirrels have a unique dynamic energy and that’s what
attracted Tim. He didn’t want to shoot in high-speed or interfere in any way with that natural
edge, that intensity and speed that’s utterly charming and can be a bit unnerving.”
Jon Thum, Visual Effects Supervisor for Framestore-CFC, came aboard to lend his
expertise to the squirrel action, eventually contributing 88 VFX shots to the mix, “multiplying
the real squirrels in about 15 shots as well as the much harder task of creating squirrels from
scratch for another 64. Some shots of the squirrels on stools, turning their heads, had to be CG,
and once they are on the floor they are mostly CG shots.”
Multiplication meant capturing the animals performing on cue, one at a time, and joining
the images to present the group in unison. For example, where the squirrels are meant to jump
from their stools en masse and run toward Veruca, Thum explains, “they could jump, but not all
 23

at the same time. So we had to shoot each squirrel alone, jumping off its stool, and then
synchronize them into one shot.”
To create the virtual squirrels, Thum’s team “took loads of reference footage of the real
thing. We had them running, jumping, shelling nuts, tugging at bits of fabric. Animation cycles
were built based on this reference to use in all the shots, then for any ‘hero’ squirrels the
animators would go in and keyframe that squirrel individually. In some shots our job was to
animate actions the animals could not do, like tap Veruca on the head, but the movements you
see them doing right before and after that are referenced from real squirrels.”
The computer images were then painstakingly rendered hair by hair to convey
individuality, as Thum describes. “The tricky part was that many CG shots had to cut with shots
of the real animals and we found that our close-up squirrels needed five million hairs to look
authentic.” Fur was groomed to match the tiniest details of length, color and direction of growth.
Nuances of movement such as breathing and twitching were added to complete the effect.
Additionally, Scanlan produced 12 animatronic models, plus some partials attached to
hand-held poles. “In most of the shots there will be a live squirrel in the foreground performing
an action and several animatronics in the background repeating it,” he says. The advantage of
animatronics is that they don’t mind doing things endlessly and they don’t complain; but they’re
never going to appear as real, so mixing and matching is the way to go.”
Scanlan’s puppet crew were driven by internal motor packs that enabled a wide range of
motion including moving their heads, holding a nut and shaking it or listening to it, and flicking
their tails around. “We could program and control them to do whatever Tim needed.”
When Veruca tries to kidnap a squirrel and is summarily knocked down by the incensed
rodents en masse, a number of animatronic animals join their warm-blooded brethren in the fray,
designed by Scanlan “with little hand and mouth springs to grasp onto the fabric of her dress.”
Great care was taken to avoid injuring squirrels that might dart underneath her or her
stunt double as Veruca hits the ground. In fact, she lands on an unseen platform just above the
ground, with ample clearance below. Supplementing the animal actors with animatronics and
CGI in this scene created the striking effect of Veruca being completely covered in squirrels.
 24

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Marks the 11th Collaboration between
Tim Burton and Acclaimed Composer Danny Elfman

Providing the film’s distinctive score and putting Roald Dahl’s Oompa-Loopah lyrical
chants to original music for four special songs is multiple Oscar and Grammy Award nominated
composer/musician Danny Elfman.
Although not a musical (no one but the Oompas sing), Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory includes four scenes in which the Oompa-Loompas recount, in song, the woeful
misadventures of the unruly children on the factory tour. All the Oompa-Loompa vocals are
performed by Elfman, formerly lead singer of Oingo Boingo. Using Dahl’s own words from the
book, he tailored the pieces stylistically to each child – Violet, Augustus, Veruca and Mike –
whose bad behavior sets off alarming consequences and illustrates a moral lesson.
“The challenge was to give each song for each child its own distinct feel, and have each
one go to a completely different place,” says Elfman. “Augustus Gloop was inspired by big
brassy Bollywood production pieces. For Violet, the gum-chewer, I threw back to a retro 70’s
funk feel. For Mike Teavee, I needed something frenetic and hyperactive like he is – the short
attention span, video game, rock kid. Because Veruca goes down the garbage chute and all the
lyrics were about fish heads and such, Tim suggested we contrast that with a really sweet sound,
so we went in a 60-ish kind of hippie/happy love-psychedelic direction.”
For the song’s lyrics, Elfman went directly to the book. “I wanted to stay as true to Roald
Dahl’s words as possible. In the book, they were written more like extended chants than songs,
but his lyrics already had a wonderful rhythm to them. In the end, I had to do a lot of editing, but
I think I was 95% true to the book, with just a bit of tweaking here and there.”
The creative collaboration between Tim Burton and the multi-talented Elfman is one of
the longest-running and most successful director/composer relationships in the industry,
beginning with Burton’s 1985 feature debut, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and spanning 20 years to
include such memorable titles as Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare
Before Christmas and Sleepy Hollow. Of Elfman’s seven Grammy nominations, four were for
Burton films (Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Planet of the Apes and Big Fish), with 2003’s Big
Fish also bringing him the most recent of three Oscar nominations.
 25

For Burton, “his music has always been a guidepost, a way to help define the various
elements of a story and draw it all together. In a way, he’s like another actor in the film.”
“The great part of working with Tim on the music was that he kept throwing me off
center by suggesting different styles of music that I wasn’t expecting, but we had worked
together enough times so that I knew I could do a lot of crazy things without shocking him,” says
Elfman. “Likewise, his ideas have so many times led me to places that I wouldn’t have thought
of but that remain my favorites. In particular, on the songs for Charlie, Tim and I worked very
closely together and I’d have to say, I can’t remember when I’ve had more fun working at all. It
was truly and wonderfully nuts!”

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The IMAX Experience

Scheduled for Concurrent Release in IMAX Theaters Around the World

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will be released in IMAX® theatres worldwide,
beginning July 15th, 2005. The film has been digitally re-mastered into the unparalleled image
and sound quality of The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-
mastering) technology.
This is the sixth IMAX DMR release from Warner Bros. Pictures, following closely on
the heels of Batman Begins: The IMAX Experience, which opened June 15, 2005. Previous
collaborations include The Polar Express: An IMAX 3D Experience (the highest grossing
IMAX DMR film to date), in addition to the digitally re-mastered releases of Harry Potter and
the Prisoner of Azkaban and the last two installments of the Matrix trilogy, as well as the
original production of NASCAR 3D: The IMAX Experience.
IMAX Theatres deliver images of unsurpassed clarity and impact, providing audiences
an opportunity to experience the magic, excitement and wonder of Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory on screens up to eight stories tall and 120 feet wide, surrounded by up to 14,000 watts
of pure digital sound.
“So much of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is larger than life,” says Tim Burton.
“The immersive IMAX format adds its own dimension to the sense of wonder that comes from
stepping inside Willy Wonka’s fantastic world and realizing the brilliance of Roald Dahl.”
 26

The sheer size of a 15/70 film frame, combined with the unique IMAX projection
technology, is key to the extraordinary sharpness and clarity of the images projected in IMAX
theatres. The 15/70 film frame is ten times larger than a conventional 35mm frame and three
times bigger than a standard 70mm frame. IMAX projectors are the most advanced, powerful
and highest-precision projectors in the world, and the key to their performance is the proprietary
“Rolling Loop” film movement which advances the film horizontally in a smooth, wave-like
motion. During projection, each frame is positioned on fixed registration pins, and the film is
held firmly against the rear element of the lens by a vacuum. As a result, the picture and focus
steadiness are far above normal projection standards and provide outstanding image clarity.
To fully envelop IMAX theatre-goers, the presentation is enhanced by a multi-channel
stereo surround system comprised of 44 custom designed speakers that extract up to 14,000
watts of pure digital surround sound. The IMAX Proportional Point Source loudspeaker system
was specifically designed for IMAX Theatres and delivers superb sound quality to every
member of the audience, regardless of where they may be seated.
IMAX has redefined the movie-going experience with IMAX DMR, a patented,
revolutionary technology that allows live-action films to be transformed into the unparalleled
image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience.
IMAX DMR starts by converting a 35mm frame into digital form at a very high
resolution, capturing all the detail from the original. The proprietary software mathematically
analyzes and extracts the important image elements in each frame from the original structure to
create a pristine copy of the original photography. This is the most complex step in IMAX
DMR. The image on a 35mm film frame is comprised of a fine grain structure like that of all
photographic images. This grain, when projected onto the IMAX screen, looks like a TV
channel that isn’t quite tuned to the station. Removing the grain while preserving the quality of
the underlying image is the basis of IMAX DMR.
To create the brightness and clarity that audiences have come to expect from The IMAX
Experience, IMAX uses a proprietary computer program. The digitally re-mastered film is then
transferred onto the world’s largest film format, 15-perforations 70mm. In addition, the film’s
original soundtrack is recreated for IMAX’s powerful multi-speaker sound system, which further
enhances the movie-going experience and helps put audiences in the picture.
________________________________
 27

ABOUT THE CAST

JOHNNY DEPP (Willy Wonka) has earned both critical and popular acclaim for his
unique work in a variety of memorable feature films. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is
Depp’s fourth collaboration with director Tim Burton and he is providing the voice of Victor in
Burton’s new stop-motion animation feature, Corpse Bride.
Recently, the actor received an Academy Award nomination, Golden Globe nomination,
Screen Actor’s Guild nomination and BAFTA nomination for his role as J.M. Barry in Mark
Forster’s Finding Neverland in which he starred opposite Kate Winslet and Freddie Highmore.
Depp also received an Academy Award nomination, Golden Globe nomination, BAFTA
nomination and a Screen Actor’s Guild Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Captain Jack
Sparrow in the action adventure Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He is
currently filming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean 3.
He will next star in Laurence Dunmore’s Libertine, in which he plays a 17th Century womanizing
poet opposite John Malkovich and Samantha Morton.
Depp’s other screen credits include David Koepp’s Secret Window, Robert Rodriguez’s
Once Upon A Time in Mexico, Albert and Allen Hughes’ From Hell, Ted Demme’s Blow, Lasse
Hallstom’s romantic comedy Chocolat, Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls, Sally Potter’s The
Man Who Cried, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate and Terry
Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Hailed as the “Best Actor” of his generation for his performance in Mike Newell’s
Donnie Brasco with Al Pacino, Depp has also starred in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man and in
Jeremy Leven’s Don Juan Demarco in which he starred as a man convinced he is the world’s
greatest lover, opposite legendary actors Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway.
It was his compelling performance in the title role of Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands
that established Depp as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after talents and earned him a Best
Actor Golden Globe nomination. He was honored with a second Golden Globe nomination for
his work in the offbeat love story Benny & Joon, directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik. Depp
reunited with Burton for the critically acclaimed Ed Wood, for which his performance garnered
him his third Best Actor Golden Globe nomination.
 28

Other films include Lasse Halstrom’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Emir Kusturica’s
Arizona Dream and John Badham’s Nick of Time.
Depp began his career as a musician, joining a rock group named “Kids,” which
eventually took him to Los Angeles. When the band broke up, he turned to acting and earned his
first major acting job in Nightmare on Elm Street. He went on to earn roles in several films
including Oliver Stone’s Academy Award-winning Platoon. Depp then won the role that would
prove to be his breakthrough, as undercover detective Tom Hanson on the popular Fox television
show 21 Jump Street. He starred on the series for four seasons before segueing to the big screen
in the lead role of John Waters’ Cry Baby.
Depp starred and made his feature directorial debut opposite Marlon Brando in The
Brave, a film based on the novel by Gregory McDonald. Depp co-wrote the screenplay with his
brother, D.P. Depp.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the second time that FREDDIE HIGHMORE
(Charlie Bucket) has played Helena Bonham Carter’s child. His very first film role was playing
her son in Women Talking Dirty.
Last year, the British 13-year-old was seen in Marc Forster’s Finding Neverland
alongside Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and Dustin Hoffman; Two Brothers directed by Jean-
Jacques Annaud; and Five Children and It with Kenneth Branagh.
Highmore has appeared in a number of television productions including in the U.K., the
BBC film Happy Birthday Shakespeare and ITV’s mini series I Saw You, as well as The Mists of
Avalon in the U.S.
He is currently shooting Arthur and the Minimoys for Luc Besson in France.

A familiar face to many for his countless appearances on the stage, television and big
screen, Irish actor DAVID KELLY (Grandpa Joe) trained at the acclaimed Abbey Theatre
School in Dublin.
Recognized for his role in Kirk Jones’ Waking Ned Devine, Kelly was nominated by both
the Golden Satellite Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards for his outstanding
performance as Michael O’Sullivan. The Screen Actors Guild also nominated Kelly and the cast
members, Ian Bannen, Fionnula Flanagan, Susan Lynch and James Nesbitt for their outstanding
performances.
 29

Kelly’s feature film credits include Alex De Rakoff’s The Calcium Kid, Kevin Allen’s
Agent Cody Banks II, Peter Howitt’s Laws of Attraction, David Blair’s Mystics, Barry Skolnick’s
Mean Machine, Joel Hershman’s Greenfingers, Ordinary Decent Criminal, Mike Newell’s Into
the West, Suri Krishnamma’s A Man of No Importance, Peter Yates’ The Run of the Country,
Terence Young’s The Jigsaw Man, Roman Polanski’s Pirates and Aislung Walsh’s Joyriders.
His most memorable television work includes the cult British TV comedies Fawlty
Towers with John Cleese and Robin’s Nest with Richard O’Sullivan. In addition to appearing in
numerous dramas for the BBC and ITV, Kelly’s other television drama series include Z Cars,
Emmerdale, Heartbeat and Ballykissangel.
Theatre highlights over his long career include the world premiere of Brendan Behan’s
The Quare Fella; Samuel Beckett’s one-man piece Krapp’s Last Tape, in New York’s Lincoln
Centre as well as in Chicago and Melbourne, Australia; the world premiere of Behan’s Joan
Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop production of Waiting for Godot; the Hal Prince production of
They Might Be Giants and The Crucible.
During the 1960s, Kelly toured in GB Shaw’s Candida and Mrs. Warren’s Profession in
Stockholm, Amsterdam and Oslo. He appeared in the Paris and Zurich productions of James
Joyce’s Stephen D and W.B. Yeats’ The Countless Cathleen. He also worked with Robert Ryan
in John Neville’s company at the Nottingham Playhouse.
Recent theatre work includes the Gate Theatre U.S. Tour of Krapp’s Last Tape; the
American tour of Playboy of the Western World, which earned him a Helen Hayes Award
nomination; Moon for the Misbegotten in Buffalo, New York; Ghosts in Huntington, Long
Island; Tartuffe and Sunshine Boys at the Gate Theatre, Dublin; and The Crucible at the Abbey
Theatre.
In 2003 the Irish Times awarded Kelly a Lifetime Achievement Award for his
contribution to the Irish Theatre.

British actress HELENA BONHAM CARTER (Mother Bucket) has lent her talents to a
wide array of diverse feature films such as David Fincher’s provocative Fight Club, Tim
Burton’s new version of The Planet of the Apes and the dark comedy Novocaine, directed by
David Atkins.
 30

She recently starred in Hans Canosa’s Conversations with Other Women. She also
appeared in Burton’s Big Fish in which she played two roles, Jenny and The Witch; Michael
Petroni’s Till Human Voices Wake Us; and the HBO film Live from Baghdad, directed by Mick
Jackson, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award. Other recent
films include Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s The Heart of Me.
For her performance in Ian Softley’s Wings of the Dove, she received a Best Actress
nomination for an Academy Award, as well as a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild
Award. She received a Canadian Genie Award for Best Actress for Mort Ransen’s Margaret’s
Museum and was also Emmy-nominated for her role in Steve Barron’s mini series Merlin.
On the last day of filming her screen debut in Trevor Nunn’s Lady Jane, James Ivory
offered her the ingenue lead in A Room with a View. It was the first of a series of roles in E.M.
Forster adaptations that would bring her international acclaim and was followed by Charles
Sturridge’s Where Angels Fear to Tread and James Ivory’s Howard’s End. She played Ophelia
in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, opposite Mel Gibson, and portrayed Elizabeth in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein, directed by Kenneth Branagh. She subsequently appeared as Woody Allen’s wife
in Mighty Aphrodite.
Bonham Carter’s television appearances include Dancing Queen, Fatal Deception, A
Dark Adapted Eye, Merlin and Henri VIII. Her stage credits include Woman in White, The
Chalk Garden, House of Bernarda Alba and Trelawny of the Wells.
She is currently providing the voice for Lady Tottington in Nick Parker’s animated
feature film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and the voice of the Corpse Bride
in Tim Burton’s new stop-motion animation feature Corpse Bride.

NOAH TAYLOR (Father Bucket), one of Australia’s most talented and prolific actors,
is best known for his acclaimed performance as Danny Embling in The Year My Voice Broke and
its sequel, Flirting, both directed by John Duigan.
He began his career at the St. Martin’s Youth Theatre in Melbourne. His stage
performances include leading roles in such productions as The Seagull, Pierrot Lunaire, Bloody
Mama, Alien in the Park, The Grim Reaper, The Advertisment, Baron in the Trees and Eric and
Verna.
 31

Taylor’s television appearances include A Long Way From Home, Bangkok Hilton,
Inspector Morse, in the episode “Promised Land,” and Jon’s Jury.
On screen, Taylor has appeared in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,
Menno Meyjes’ Max, Simon West’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Lara Croft: Cradle of Life,
Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky and Almost Famous, Guy Jenkins’ The Sleeping Dictionary,
Richard Lowenstein’s He Died With A Felafel in His Hand, Ben Hopkins’ Simon Magus, Scott
Hicks’ Shine, George Whaley’s On Our Selection, Geoffrey Wright’s Lover Boy, Ian Pringle’s
The Prisoner of St. Petersburg and Bob Ellis’ The Nostradamus Kid. He will next be seen in
Terrence Malick’s The New World.
Taylor was nominated for Best Actor by the AFI for his performance in The Year My
Voice Broke and Best Supporting Actor for On Our Selection. He has won the Sydney Film
Critics Circle Award for Best Actor three times: in 1988 for The Year My Voice Broke, in 1991
for Flirting and in 1993 for The Nostradamus Kid.
For his outstanding performance as the young David Helfgott in Shine, he received a Best
Supporting Actor Award from the Film Critics Circle of Australia and a Best Actor Award by the
Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, as well as nominations for Best Supporting Actor from the
Australian Film Institute and the Screen Actors Guild.

The talent, charm and humor which MISSI PYLE (Mrs. Beauregarde) exudes in each
character she portrays has established her as a rising star and one of the most sought-after
actresses in Hollywood. She recently wrapped Just My Luck with Lindsay Lohan, proving that
she is the girl who is everywhere and with everyone. In addition, Missi stars in the upcoming
independent film American Crude, working with an all-star ensemble including Jennifer Esposito
and Rob Schneider.
Missi’s standout performances include Along Came Polly, opposite Ben Stiller and
Jennifer Aniston; Big Fish, opposite Ewan McGregor; Fifty First Dates, with Adam Sandler and
Drew Barrymore; and Bringing Down the House, with Steve Martin and Queen Latifah. Missi
proved her versatility with hysterical performances in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,
starring again with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn; and opposite Tom Arnold in Soul Plane.
Born in Texas and raised in Tennessee, Missi discovered her passion for acting as well as
comedy. She attended the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts and after graduation,
 32

moved to New York to pursue a career in theater. One of her first roles found her performing
opposite John Malkovich in Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company’s The Libertine.
Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Missi landed a feature role in the film As Good As It
Gets. In 1999, she gained attention for her hilarious portrayal of the alien Laliari in the sleeper
hit Galaxy Quest, opposite Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver. She went on to star in Josie and
the Pussycats. In addition, Missi guest starred on television shows such as Mad About You, The
Drew Carey Show and Friends, and then segued to a series regular on the ABC variety show The
Wayne Brady Show.

In a career that spans more than 50 years, British Actor JAMES FOX (Mr. Salt) has
established himself as a highly distinguished actor with over 60 film and television roles to his
credit. Most recently, he starred in Martha Coolidge’s The Prince and Me, Ismail Merchant’s
The Mystic Masseur, Kelly Makin’s Mickey Blue Eyes, James Ivory’s The Golden Bowl and
Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast.
Fox began his career as a child star in the 1950 film The Miniver Story, the Hollywood
sequel to the 1942 film Mrs Miniver. He followed up a year later with The Magnet.
By the early 1960s, the former child actor was assuming adult roles in such films as
Joseph Losey’s The Servant, starring Dirk Bogarde, and The Loneliness of the Long Distance
Runner. Throughout the 1960s Fox starred in classics including King Rat, Thoroughly Modern
Millie, Isadora and The Chase. He also starred in the comedy extravaganza Those Magnificent
Men in Their Flying Machines and Nicolas Roeg’s cult classic, Performance.
Following a nine-year hiatus, Fox returned to star in David Lean’s A Passage to India,
Fred Schepisi’s The Russia House, The Whistle Blower, Philip Noyce’s Patriot Games, John
Milius’ Farewell to the King, James Ivory’s Remains of the Day, Bernard Rose’s Anna Karenina
and Up at the Villa.
Fox has also appeared in numerous series and movies on the small screen including John
Schlesinger’s BAFTA Award-winning drama A Question of Attribution for the BBC, Charles
Sturridge’s Gulliver’s Travels, the BBC’s The Lost World, William Boyd’s Armadillo,
Hallmark’s Hans Christian Anderson, Cambridge Spies and the mini series Colditz.

This is the third time DEEP ROY (Oompa-Loompas) has worked with director Tim
Burton, having starred in Planet of the Apes and Big Fish. Roy’s other feature film credits
 33

include Surviving Eden, The Haunted Mansion, Flash Gordon, The Never Ending Story,
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Dark Crystal, the Star Wars
films The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi, and The Pink Panther Strikes Again.
Roy’s television appearances include guest starring roles in The X Files, Doctor Who,
The New Avengers, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and Night Stand.
Roy has also worked extensively as a stunt double in Van Helsing, The Jungle Book and
Poltergeist II: The Other Side to name a few.

Legendary actor CHRISTOPHER LEE (Dr. Wonka) most recently starred in The Lord
of the Rings trilogy from New Line Cinema, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith from Lucas Films. Prior to his roles in these
blockbusters, Lee starred in the critically acclaimed independent picture Jinnah, which he
considers the most important movie of his career, and the epic BBC miniseries Gormenghast.
He was also recently seen in Crimson Rivers II with Jean Reno, as well as Tim Burton’s Sleepy
Hollow. Up next, he will appear in yet another Tim Burton production, Corpse Bride.
Lee was educated at Summer Fields preparatory school and took a scholarship at Eton
College and Wellington College, where he was a classical scholar in Greek and Latin. After
leaving school he worked as an office boy and messenger in London at the salary of one pound a
week, and during five years of World War II he served in the Royal Air Force and Special
Forces. He was decorated for distinguished service and held the rank of Flight Lieutenant.
After demobilization in 1946, he entered the film industry in 1947 and was, for a time,
under contract to the Rank Organization. He has appeared in the theatre and in operatic
performances and has recorded for radio worldwide. He also sang in The Return of Captain
Invincible and recorded “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” for Chrysalis; Stravinsky’s “The
Soldier’s Tale” for Nimbus; “Peter and the Wolf,” also for Nimbus, conducted by Yehudi
Menuhin; The King and I, Christopher Lee sings “Devils, Rogues and Other Villains, from
Broadway to Bayreuth” and many others. Most recently, he recorded an album with the world
famous metal band Rhapsody, and recorded the single “The Magic of the Wizards Dream,”
which entered the music charts, making him a top recording singer.
The directors for whom Lee has worked include John Huston, Raoul Walsh, Joseph
Losey, George Marshall, Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, Michael Powell, Edward Molinaro,
 34

Jerome Savary, Billy Wilder, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, Peter Jackson, Tim Burton, John
Landis, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Andrei Konchalovsky. He has filmed in Russian, French,
Italian, German and Spanish, and has worked in numerous countries all over the world.
Lee has appeared in more than 250 film and television productions, amongst which the
best known are A Tale of Two Cities, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wicker Man, The Private Life
of Sherlock Holmes, The Three and the Four Musketeers, The Man with the Golden Gun (of
which the author was his cousin Ian Fleming), 1941, Airport ‘77 and Gremlins II. He considers
the most important point in his career to have been as host of Saturday Night Live in 1978 with
John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin. It is
still the third highest rated show of the series.
Lee has three claims to fame as an actor: he is the only actor who has portrayed Sherlock
Holmes and his brother Mycroft; he executed King Charles the First of England and King Louis
the Sixteenth of France; and he holds the world record for more sword fights on camera than any
other actor in history. He also did all of his own stunts and is an honorary member of three
Stuntmen’s Unions.
At college he was in the top ranking at squash, racquets and fencing, and was equally at
home at cricket, rugby, football and hockey. He speaks French, Italian, Spanish and German and
can “get along” in Swedish, Russian and Greek. His hobbies are travel, opera and golf. His
handicap, once scratch, is now eight and he is now the only actor who has been made a member
of the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, the oldest golf club in the world founded in
1744. He has had the great fortune to have played most of the world’s famous courses and is
profoundly grateful to have played with virtually all the great golfers of modern times, from
James Braid to Jack Nicklaus.
Lee has received awards for his contribution to the cinema from the United States,
France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Great Britain. He is a Commander Brother of the Order of St.
John of Jerusalem, the world’s oldest order.
He has been married for 44 years to Danish model and painter Gitte Kroencke, who
before their marriage modeled for Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel and Christian Dior. They have
one daughter, Christina, born in Switzerland. After living some years in Switzerland and
California, they are now residents in the United Kingdom.
 35

Amongst his publications are an autobiography Tall, Dark and Gruesome, first published
by W.H. Allen in 1977 (and since re-published in 1997 and also re-published in 2003 by Orion
Books Ltd as Lord of Misrule, introduced by Peter Jackson) as well as The Great Villains,
Archives of Evil and The Films of Christopher Lee (Scarecrow Press). Lee is listed in the
Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats as being the international star with the most screen
credits. He was awarded the London Film Critics Dilys Powell ‘94 award for his work as an
actor and services to the film industry. He has recently been awarded Commander of the British
Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s Birthday’s Honors list. In 2002, at the height of his career, he was
awarded the prestigious Lifetime World Actor Award in Vienna from the hands of Mikhail
Gorbachev. He was named by the French Government Officer of Arts and Letters.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

TIM BURTON (Director) most recently directed Big Fish, a heartwarming tale of a
fabled relationship between a father and his son. The film was hailed as Burton’s most personal
and emotional to date, earning respectable reviews and box office. Big Fish starred Ewan
McGregor, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange and Billy Crudup.
His previous film was Planet of the Apes, a project that brought him together with
producer Richard D. Zanuck, the former 20th Century Fox studio head who had greenlit the
original film in l968. Burton’s Planet of the Apes starred Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena
Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan and Kris Kristofferson and was a summer 2001 box-
office hit.
All of Burton’s films are well known for the highly imaginative and detailed world he
creates to surround and inform the story. They include Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice,
Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas,
Ed Wood, Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow.
Burton began drawing at an early age, attended Cal Arts Institute on a Disney fellowship
and, soon after, joined the studio as an animator. He made his directing debut with the animated
short Vincent, narrated by Vincent Price. The film was a critical success and an award-winner on
the festival circuit. Burton’s next in-house project was a live-action short film called
Frankenweenie, an inventive and youthful twist on the Frankenstein legend.
 36

In 1985, Burton’s first feature film Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, was a box-office hit and
the director was praised for his original vision. Beetlejuice (1988), a supernatural comedy
starring Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin and Winona Ryder, was another critical
and financial success.
In 1989, Burton directed the blockbuster Batman, starring Jack Nicholson, Michael
Keaton and Kim Basinger. Following the triumph of Batman, the National Association of
Theatre Owners (NATO) awarded Burton the Director of the Year Award. The film also won an
Academy Award for Best Art Direction.
Edward Scissorhands, starring Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder and Dianne Wiest, was one
of the big hits of the 1990 Christmas season and acclaimed for its original vision and poignant
fairytale sensibility. In 1992, Burton once again explored the dark underworld of Gotham City
in Batman Returns, the highest grossing film of that year, which featured Michelle Pfeiffer as the
formidable Catwoman and Danny DeVito as The Penguin.
In 1994, Burton produced and directed Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp in the title role.
The film garnered Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi)
and Best Special Effects Makeup.
Burton conceived and produced the stop-motion animation adventure Tim Burton’s The
Nightmare Before Christmas, an original holiday tale that has become a seasonal perennial. He
also produced 1993’s Cabin Boy and 1995’s summer blockbuster Batman Forever, as well as the
1996 release of James and the Giant Peach, based on Roald Dahl’s children’s novel.
Burton produced and directed Mars Attacks!, a sci-fi comedy based on the original Topps
trading card series, starring an elite array of 20 leading players including Jack Nicholson, Glenn
Close, Danny DeVito and Annette Bening.
In 1999 Burton directed Sleepy Hollow, which was inspired by Washington Irving’s
classic story and starred Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson and Michael
Gambon. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Costume Design
and Best Cinematography and won the Oscar for Best Art Direction. Honors from BAFTA
included Best Costume Design and Best Production Design.
Burton authored and illustrated a children’s book for The Nightmare Before Christmas,
released in conjunction with the film. His next book of drawings and rhyming verse, The
 37

Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories, was praised by the New York Times for
“conveying the pain of an adolescent outsider.”
Burton is currently directing Corpse Bride, scheduled for release later this year.

JOHN AUGUST (Screenplay) wrote and co-produced Go, which debuted at the 1999
Sundance Film Festival. Since then, his writing credits have included Charlie’s Angels,
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Titan A.E.
In 2004, August was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay by BAFTA and the
Broadcast Film Critics Association for his adaptation of Daniel Wallace’s novel Big Fish, A
Story of Mythic Proportions. Big Fish marked his first collaboration with director Tim Burton,
which led to his work on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Upcoming projects for August include a big-screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s
Tarzan, and Tim Burton’s animated Corpse Bride. He is also executive-producing Prince of
Persia, an adaptation of the best-selling videogame for Disney.
Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, August earned a degree in journalism from Drake
University in Iowa and an MFA in film from the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC. He
frequently serves as a creative advisor for the Sundance Screenwriting Institute, and runs a
website devoted to answering beginning screenwriters’ questions at [Link].

ROALD DAHL (Book Author) was born in Wales of Norwegian parents. He spent his
childhood in England and, at age 18, went to work for the Shell Oil Company in Africa. When
World War II broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force and became a fighter pilot. At the age of
26 he moved to Washington, D.C., and it was there he began to write. His first short story,
which recounted his adventures in the war, was bought by The Saturday Evening Post, and so
began a long and illustrious career.
After establishing himself as a writer for adults, Dahl began writing children’s stories in
the early 1960s while living in England with his family. His first stories were written as
entertainment for his own children, to whom many of his books are dedicated.
Roald Dahl is now considered one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. Although
he passed away in 1990, his popularity continues to increase as his fantastic novels, including
 38

James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, delight an
ever-growing legion of fans.
Learn more about Roald Dahl on the official Roald Dahl website: [Link].

BRAD GREY (Producer) was named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the
Paramount Motion Picture Group of Viacom on March 1, 2005. Grey, former Chairman of
Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, is one of the entertainment industry’s most successful
entrepreneurs as a leading film and television producer as well as talent manager.
Brad Grey was Chairman of Brillstein-Grey Entertainment (BGE) which includes the
companies Brillstein-Grey Management, Brad Grey Television and Plan B – a motion picture
production company in partnership with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. BGE was described by
Forbes Magazine as “Hollywood’s most successful management and production firm.”
Through Plan B, Grey is next producing the upcoming The Departed, a motion picture
directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. In
addition, Plan B, in its joint venture with Sony’s Tri-Star Pictures, is wrapping production on the
adaptation of Augusten Burrough’s best-selling memoi, Running With Scissors, starring Annette
Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Plan B and Initial Entertainment’s Graham King purchased the rights to the Gregory
David Roberts novel Shantaram. Johnny Depp will star in the film as well as co-produce with
Grey and King. In addition, Plan B and Warner Bros. Pictures are collaborating on several
upcoming projects including The Hatfields and the McCoys, written by Eric Roth; and the
remake of the Robert Hanson novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford, to be written and directed by Andrew Dominik. Brad Pitt is set to star in both films.
Plan B is also in pre-production on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by
Mark Haddon, to be written and directed by Steve Kloves, the screenwriter of the Harry Potter
motion pictures. Other projects include The Time Traveler’s Wife, from the book by Audrey
Niffenegger, A Million Little Pieces by author James Frey, and A Mighty Heart, based on
Marianne Pearl’s book about her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
During Grey’s 20 years tenure, Brillstein-Grey produced some of the most popular and
most honored series on television, including the Emmy award-winning hit The Sopranos. Other
series include: The Larry Sanders Show, NewsRadio, Just Shoot Me, According to Jim and Real
 39

Time with Bill Maher. Brillstein Grey’s extensive list of more then 150 clients includes:
Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox Arquette, Nicolas Cage, The Honorable Rudolph Giuliani,
Lorne Michaels, Brad Pitt and Adam Sandler.
Grey is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner as well as a four time recipient of the
prestigious George Foster Peabody Award as an executive producer. In addition, he is a
seventeen-time Emmy Award nominee. Grey serves on the Board of Directors of the UCLA
School of Medicine and Project A.L.S.

In a career as celebrated as it is accomplished, RICHARD D. ZANUCK (Producer)

commands a distinguished reputation in the motion picture industry as one of its most progressive
and honored leaders.
Pre-eminent as an independent producer and former studio head, Zanuck has earned
numerous awards and citations for his achievements in his more than 40 years of filmmaking.
Among them, perhaps the most significant and the one that bears the greatest testament to his well-
earned stature is the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, bestowed upon him in 1991. This
illustrious accolade, given only 29 times in the Academy’s history, recognizes Zanuck as “a creative
producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” A
precedent-setting honor and personal milestone as well, this Thalberg Award makes Zanuck the
only second-generation recipient ever, in company with his father, Darryl F. Zanuck.
Only one year prior, Richard Zanuck, along with Lili Fini Zanuck, took home an Oscar as
producer of the Academy Award-winning Best Picture of 1989, Driving Miss Daisy, for which he
also received a Golden Globe Award, The National Board of Review Award and Producer of the
Year honors from the Producers Guild of America. Zanuck’s Driving Miss Daisy win set another
industry precedent – making Richard and Darryl the only father and son in motion picture history to
both win Best Picture Oscars.
As head of his own production entity, The Zanuck Company, in which he is partnered with
his wife, Lili, Zanuck continues a successful career forged on a solid foundation. Upon graduation
from Stanford University and military service as an army lieutenant, Zanuck joined his father as a
story and production assistant on two Twentieth Century Fox films, Island in the Sun and The Sun
Also Rises. At 24, he made his debut as a full-fledged producer with the feature film Compulsion,
which went on to win the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for the ensemble work of its
 40

stars Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman. He followed that with Sanctuary, based
on the William Faulkner novel, and with The Chapman Report, directed by George Cukor.
At 27, Zanuck was named Executive VP in charge of production of Twentieth Century Fox
and became the then-youngest corporate head in Hollywood annals. During his eight years at the
helm, the studio recaptured the luster of its heyday and received an unprecedented 159 Oscar
nominations. Three of the films, The Sound of Music, Patton and The French Connection, went on
to win Best Picture of the Year Oscars. Other successes include The Planet of the Apes series,
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and M*A*S*H.
Zanuck subsequently moved from Fox to become senior executive vice-president at Warner
Bros. Pictures, where he and soon-to-be partner David Brown oversaw production of such box-
office hits as The Exorcist and Blazing Saddles.
With the formation of the Zanuck/Brown Co. in 1971, one of the motion picture industry’s
most distinguished and successful independent production entities was born. Over the ensuing
decade and a half, Zanuck/Brown was responsible for such critical and box-office hits as Jaws, a
triple-Oscar winner and Best Picture nominee; Jaws II; The Sugarland Express, Best Screenplay
winner at the Cannes Film Festival and Steven Spielberg’s first directorial effort. The Sting, winner
of seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, was a Zanuck/Brown presentation; and The
Verdict, nominated for five Academy Awards. Along with Lili Fini Zanuck, Zanuck/Brown also
produced the double-Oscar winner Cocoon, and its sequel, Cocoon: The Return.
The Zanuck Company, formed in 1988, scored a phenomenal success with its debut
production, Driving Miss Daisy. Nominated for nine Academy Awards and winner of four,
including Best Picture, the Pulitzer Prize winning play-turned-feature film grossed in excess of $100
million at the domestic box-office and with its cost of $5 million now ranks as one of the most
profitable releases in Warner Bros. Pictures’ history.
Zanuck followed up the major success of Driving Miss Daisy with the critically acclaimed
Rush, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jason Patric, based on the best-selling book by Kim
Wozencraft. The film represented the directorial debut of Lili Fini Zanuck, and its score by Eric
Clapton became one of the most acclaimed of 1992.
Other producing credits with Lili Fini Zanuck include Rich In Love, which reunited the
Driving Miss Daisy creative team of the Zanucks with director Bruce Beresford and writer Alfred
Uhry; Wild Bill, Walter Hill’s fact-based look at the legendary frontiersman Wild Bill Hickok; and
 41

Mulholland Falls, a drama set in the fifties about a team of elite L.A. police officers with an all star
cast including Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith and John Malkovich.
Zanuck’s release Deep Impact grossed $350 million in the worldwide market place, making
it the first bona fide blockbuster of the 1998 summer season. Rules Of Engagement, which Zanuck
produced with Scott Rudin, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel Jackson, Guy Pearce and Ben
Kingsley, was also enormously successful.
The Zanuck Company joined forces with Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood to
produce True Crime, a suspense thriller based on Andrew Klavan’s best-selling novel, in which
Eastwood also starred and directed for Warner Bros. Pictures.
In March of 2000, Richard and Lili Zanuck produced the 72nd annual Oscar presentation,
which garnered 9 Emmy nominations and earned the highest network ratings of the last five years.
Zanuck’s re-imagining of Planet of the Apes, directed by Tim Burton, was released in July
2001 and became one of the top-grossing films of that year in both domestic and international
markets. Other recent projects from the Zanuck Company include the critically acclaimed Road to
Perdition, directed by Sam Mendes, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law, as well as
Tim Burton’s star-studded Big Fish, featuring Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup,
Jessica Lange and Alison Lohman.
Zanuck has many projects currently in development working out of his Beverly Hills office
with his wife Lili and his two sons, Harrison and Dean.

PATRICK McCORMICK (Executive Producer) has worked on a wide range of films

with many top actors and filmmakers. Most recently he produced P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan,
starring Jason Isaacs, Jeremy Sumpter, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Lynn Redgrave and Richard Briers.
His many credits as executive producer include three films directed by Barry Levinson: Bandits,
the comic caper starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett; Everlasting
Piece, a comedy set in the 1980’s Belfast, starring Barry McEvoy, Brain F O’Byrne, Anna Friel
and Billy Connolly; and Liberty Heights, the fourth in the director’s Baltimore series, starring
Adrien Brody, Bebe Neuwirth and Joe Mantegna.
McCormick was also executive producer of Stepmom, starring Julia Roberts, Susan
Sarandon and Ed Harris; Donnie Brasco, starring Al Pacino, Johnny Depp and Anne Heche; The
 42

Juror, starring Demi Moore, Alec Baldwin and James Gandolfini; and Boys on the Side, starring
Drew Barrymore, Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker and Matthew McConaughey.
He also previously produced films including Angie, starring Geena Davis; A Shock to the
System, starring Michael Caine; and The Last Rites, starring Tom Berenger.

FELICITY DAHL (Executive Producer) was born in Llandaff, Wales in 1938 and had a
Catholic education, attending various schools throughout her childhood. When she was
nineteen, she worked in the fashion department of Harper’s Bazaar and a couple of years later
she joined Scenery Limited as a freelance fashion stylist for television commercials
Later, she attended a Carving and Gilding course at the City and Guilds London Art
School and in 1981 she and others started their own business, Carvers and Gilders.
Felicity, known as Liccy (pronounced Lissy), had three daughters, Neisha, Charlotte and
Lorina (deceased 1990), during a previous marriage and is now grandmother to four grandsons,
Billy, Oscar, Max and Sam, and one granddaughter, Edie.
In 1983 Felicity married Roald Dahl. She still lives at Gipsy House, the family home in
Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. She is the chairman of Dahl & Dahl Limited, the company
which manages the Roald Dahl literary estate.
After Roald’s death in 1990, Felicity established the Roald Dahl Foundation, of which
she is Chairman. The Roald Dahl Foundation is a United Kingdom-based grant-giving charity
and its aim is to help children in the areas of literacy, neurology and haematology.
Felicity has also commissioned a library of music based on her late husband’s works with
the hope that an introduction to classical music will bring children into the concert hall in the
same way that his books have brought them into the world of literature. All proceeds raised from
the performance and commercial exploitation of these pieces go to the Roald Dahl Foundation.
She wrote The Roald Dahl Cookbook in conjunction with Roald and since his death has
produced two cookbooks for children: Revolting Recipes and Even More Revolting Recipes.
More recently she has been using her energy to set up the Roald Dahl Museum and Story
Centre in Great Missenden, the village in Buckinghamshire where Roald Dahl lived and worked
for forty years. The museum opened in June 2005.
 43

MICHAEL SIEGEL (Executive Producer) is president of Michael Siegel & Associates,

Inc. Siegel’s company manages and produces exceptional literary properties, focused on their
translation to film.
Siegel has managed the literary properties for the Estate of Roald Dahl since the year
after one of the world’s most beloved children’s author’s death in 1990. In addition to Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory, Siegel has helped put together the films for other Dahl properties
including James and the Giant Peach (Henry Selick, Tim Burton) and Matilda (Danny DeVito),
as well as the upcoming The BFG (Kathy Kennedy) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson).
Siegel manages other artists and properties including Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, Out of
Sight), the Estate of Philip K. Dick (Scanner Darkly, Blade Runner), William Joyce (Robots, A
Day With Wilbur Robinson), Michael Cunningham (The Hours, A Home at the End of the World)
and the character of Zorro.
Siegel has recently formed a crossover media company with a focus on family
entertainment that puts the artists and intellectual property holders in a central position during a
time of extraordinary change and opportunity.
Siegel lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

With unrivalled experience in the entertainment and media industries, GRAHAM

BURKE (Executive Producer) has been one of the strategic and creative leaders behind Village
Roadshow’s development. He founded Roadshow Distributors with Roc Kirby in 1968 and was
an initial director of radio station 2DayFM.
Burke initiated Warner Bros. Movie World with Warner Bros. Pictures and managed the
takeover of Sea World. He also spent four years as the original Commissioner of the Australian
Film Commission.
He is Director of Austereo Group Limited, Sea World Management Limited, is on the
Board of Village Roadshow Limited and currently holds the title of Managing Director,
Executive Director Village Roadshow Limited.

Educated at Bennington College and the California Institute of the Arts Film School,
BRUCE BERMAN (Executive Producer) graduated Magna Cum Laude from UCLA in 1975
 44

with a major in history. He went on to graduate from Georgetown Law School 1978, and was
admitted to the California Bar that same year.
Berman got his start in the motion picture business with Jack Valenti at the MPAA in
Washington, D.C., working as his assistant while in law school. After graduating, he returned to
Los Angeles and started working as Peter Gruber’s assistant at Casablanca Filmworks in
September of 1978. He went on to work as assistant to Sean Daniel and Joel Silver at Universal
Pictures in July 1979, becoming a production Vice President at Universal in 1982.
In 1984, Berman came to Warner Bros. Pictures as a Production VP and was promoted to
Senior VP of Production in 1988. He was appointed President of Theatrical Production in
September 1989, and then President of Worldwide Theatrical Production in 1991, where he
served through May, 1996. Under the aegis, Warner Bros. Pictures, produced and distributed the
following: Presumed Innocent, Goodfellas, Robin Hood, Driving Miss Daisy, Batman Forever,
Under Siege, Malcolm X, The Bodyguard, JFK, The Fugitive, Dave, Disclosure, The Pelican
Brief, Outbreak, The Client, A Time to Kill and Twister.
In May of 1996, Berman started Plan B Entertainment, an independent motion picture
production company at Warner Bros. Pictures.
Berman was appointed Chairman and CEO of Village Roadshow Pictures in February,
1998. Village Roadshow Pictures will make 60 theatrical features as a joint venture partner with
Warner Bros. Pictures through 2007. The initial slate of films included Practical Magic, starring
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman; Analyze This, starring Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal;
The Matrix, starring Keanu Reaves and Laurence Fishburne; Deep Blue Sea, starring Samuel L.
Jackson; Three Kings, starring George Clooney; Space Cowboys, starring Clint Eastwood and
Tommy Lee Jones; Miss Congeniality, starring Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt; and Cats &
Dogs.
Subsequent releases included Training Day, starring Academy Award-winning Denzel
Washington and Ethan Hawke; Ocean’s Eleven, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Julia
Roberts; Analyze That; Two Weeks Notice, starring Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant; The Matrix
Reloaded; The Matrix Revolutions; Mystic River, starring Sean Penn and Tim Robbins; Ocean’s
Twelve; Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves; Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous and
House of Wax. Up next is the film The Dukes of Hazzard, starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann
William Scott, Jessica Simpson, Burt Reynolds and Willie Nelson.
 45

PHILIPPE ROUSSELOT, A.F.C./A.S.C. (Director of Photography) won an Academy

Award in 1993 for his work on Robert Redford’s film A River Runs Through It. He most
recently completed cinematography on Constantine, based on the DC Comics/Vertigo Hellblazer
graphic novels, starring Keanu Reeves. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory marks Rousselot’s
third collaboration with director Tim Burton. Previously, he worked on Burton’s Planet of the
Apes, as well as Big Fish – the whimsical tale of a storytelling father and his son. Big Fish
received critical acclaim and a number of award nominations in 2003.
The French-born director of photography was Oscar-nominated for two other films,
Henry & June and Hope and Glory. Other feature credits include Denzel Washington’s
directorial debut Antwone Fisher, Remember the Titans, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Mary Reilly,
Interview With the Vampire, Flesh & Bone, Sommersby, Dangerous Liaisons and Diva.

ALEX McDOWELL (Production Designer) integrates digital technologies with

traditional design to create a unique production design process. His centralized art department
comprehensively links the strands of 2D and 3D concept and set design, locations, props,
lighting and camera, visual effects and post production to support the director’s vision and the
film’s visual consistency.
McDowell started incorporating digital design into his design process with Fight Club.
He sophisticated the process in 1999 with one of the first fully integrated digital design
departments for Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, creating a realistic and intensely researched
take on the world of 2054 that fulfilled the director’s desire to immerse the audience in future
technology. For Spielberg’s The Terminal, he set up another cutting edge art department to push
the limits of current film possibility. McDowell also created the fantastical world of Dr. Seuss’
the Cat in the Hat and designed the miniature sets for Tim Burton’s upcoming stop-motion
animated feature, Corpse Bride.
He is currently immersed in Breaking and Entering, an original contemporary drama
written and directed by Anthony Minghella in London, England.
McDowell graduated from Central School of Art during the height of London’s punk
years. He attributes his willingness to take risks and his expectations of collaborative artistic
expression to the spirit of that era. In 1978, he founded Rocking Russian Design to design album
 46

covers and later, music videos for musicians of every persuasion. He produced consistently
arresting work for over a hundred music videos that reflected his bent for experimentation and
his love of music. He relocated in 1986 from London to Los Angeles where he began a prolific
career as a production designer for commercials.
His commercial work afforded him interaction with cutting-edge directors and insight
into filmmaking, and by the early 90s, he segued into film production design. He quickly
accrued such credits as The Lawnmower Man, The Crow, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fight
Club and The Affair of the Necklace. His production design continues to be infused with the
knowledge he acquired as a painter and graphic artist as exemplified by the visual coding,
atmosphere, color, character, history and texture he applies to every film.
The synergy that emerged from the collaboration amongst designers, filmmakers,
scientists and engineers during Minority Report inspired McDowell to launch Matter Art and
Science. This uniquely networked group, committed to exploring the collaborative potential of
design and engineering, art and science, is composed of members who have both a peripheral
contact with pop culture and who are established at the top of their own fields.
McDowell makes his home in Los Angeles, with his wife, painter Kirsten Everberg, and
their two children. Despite his very demanding schedule, he is active in public speaking,
participating in many international design and film conferences.

CHRIS LEBENZON, A.C.E. (Editor) previously collaborated with Tim Burton on Big
Fish, Planet of the Apes, Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks!, Ed Wood, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare
Before Christmas and Batman Returns.
Lebenzon has teamed up many times with award-winning producer Jerry Bruckheimer,
working with him on Pearl Harbor, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Enemy of the State, Armageddon,
Con Air, Crimson Tide, Days of Thunder, Beverly Hills Cop II and Top Gun. He has also
collaborated with directors Tony Scott and Michael Bay.
Lebenzon is a two-time Academy Award nominee for the films Crimson Tide and Top
Gun (co-editor). His other credits include XXX, Radio, The Last Boy Scout, Revenge, Midnight
Run, Weird Science and Wolfen.

DANNY ELFMAN (Music By) is one of the movie world’s most versatile and
successful contemporary composers and has scored 11 Tim Burton films including Pee-Wee’s
 47

Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman (for which he won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental
and a nomination for Best Score), Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Tim Burton’s The
Nightmare Before Christmas (another Grammy nomination for Best Score), Mars Attacks!,
Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes and Big Fish (Academy Award nomination).
Elfman wrote an original score for the Oscar-winning film musical Chicago and scored
the worldwide box office smash Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. His other credits include Good
Will Hunting (Academy Award nomination) and Men in Black (Academy Award nomination),
The Hulk, Red Dragon, Men in Black II, Proof of Life, Family Man, A Simple Plan, Dolores
Claiborne and the Grammy-nominated Dick Tracy, as well as Darkman, Sommersby, Dead
Presidents, Black Beauty, To Die For and Mission: Impossible.

GABRIELLA PESCUCCI (Costume Designer) has had an extensive career in feature

film, television, opera and theatre production.
She received an Academy Award for her costume design in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of
Innocence and received an Oscar nomination for Terry Gilliam’s The Adventure of Baron
Munchausen.
Her recent feature film credits include A Midsummer Night Dream, Le Temps Retrouve,
Secret Passage, Van Helsing and, most recently, Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm.
Pescucci’s opera credits include Norma, Manon Lescaut, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, La
Boheme, and Pagliacci, among many others.
Her theatre costume credits include the productions Mahogony Napoli Chi Resta e Chi
Parte, Fior De Pisello and Strano Interludio.
Pescucci has also lent her costume design talents to the film Les Miserables, Dangerous
Beauty, Cousine Bette, The Scarlet Letter, Indochine, The Name of the Rose, Once Upon A Time
in America and Federico Fellini’s La Città Delle Donne, Prova D’Orchestra.