Few filmmakers these days are as busy as Taika Waititi – who, fresh from an Oscar campaign for Jojo Rabbit, has just shot his next movie, football film Next Goal Wins, is set to pivot back to the MCU for Thor: Love And Thunder, appears in this summer’s Free Guy, and has just starred for James Gunn in the upcoming The Suicide Squad. But rather than pump the brakes, he’s added two more projects to his slate – writing and directing not one but two animated Roald Dahl projects for Netflix.
The streaming service confirmed the news on social media, and revealed that the two project are as follows – a straight-up adaptation of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, and one that is “a wholly original take on the Oompa-Loompas”. And by the sounds of things, these aren’t films – they’re going to be “animated series events”. Dahl seems like a strong fit for Waititi, whose projects often combine whimsical elements with dark edges, and present kids-eye views on corrupt adult worlds. By the sounds of it, more Dahl adaptations are on the way at Netflix, including Matilda, The BFG, The Twits and more, though Waititi is only on board for the Charlie and Oompa-Loompa stories.
While Waititi hasn’t made an animated project before, he was long attached to a stop-motion movie about Bubbles, Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee, which didn’t end up coming to fruition. Waititi’s Next Goal Wins is currently in post-production, while things are starting to gear up on pre-production for his next Thor movie. There’s no release window yet for his Roald Dahl projects, but expect them no sooner than 2021.