Johnny Depp’s Replacement as Willy Wonka Is a Lot Less Tragic

Johnny Depp is out as Willy Wonka and Timothée Chalamet is in, and, from the looks of it, this new version is just as weird but a whole lot less sad.

The first full trailer for the upcoming prequel film Wonka (directed by Paul King) has just been released, revealing Timothée Chalamet as a young Willy Wonka preparing to do a marketplace battle against a snobbish “Chocolate Cartel,” and frankly, it just gets weirder from there.

Wonka sets out to tell the story of Roald Dahl’s most famous creation as a younger man and presents him as a world-traveling genius chocolatier who arrives in a nameless city to set up shop, only to encounter an entrenched cocoa-based society that wants to shut him out.

Related: Timothée Chalamet’s Willy Wonka Likely to Be More Popular Than Johnny Depp’s

As origins stories go, you can definitely do worse than a young prodigy set against a grossly wealthy and contemptuous group of aristocrats out to crush them; at the very least, Timothée Chalamet already has quite a bit of experience in that particular kind of role.

However, unlike any other franchises that Timothée Chalamet might be involved in, his take on Willy Wonka actually seems pretty lighthearted and joyful. Compared to Johnny Depp and Tim Burton‘s icy-pale and child-hating candymaker or Gene Wilder’s fun but surprisingly-okay-with-murder factory owner, this version of Wonka actually seems charming.

A lot of that must be due to the light touch of director Paul King, best known for the wildly beloved children’s book adaptations Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017). It actually makes a great deal of sense that King would work on a new version of a different iconic British children’s book character, although Roald Dahl’s work certainly does have a lot more darkness and possible death of children by chocolate rivers than the comparatively sentimental Paddington.

Related: Timothée Chalamet’s ‘Wonka’ Character is Being Compared to a Famous Muppet

We shall have to see whether Paul King’s gentler sensibility can tone down this version of Willy Wonka. One thing that can be said is the city to which Timothée Chalamet arrives looks gloriously realized, some kind of combination of Victorian London and modern European cities; the actual city in which Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) is set is never firmly established, and it looks like this might be some kind of magical composite of any number of places.

Another thing that is clear: Wonka is going all in on the musical sequences. While the trailer for the film did not give much hint about the music itself, Timothée Chalamet is certainly throwing himself into the song-and-dance numbers in a way that neither Johnny Depp nor Gene Wilder did during their tenures as Willy Wonka. Color us intrigued.

Also, Hugh Grant is there as a very grumpy, flute-playing Oompa-Loompa. Now we’re excited.

Will Timothée Chalamet be a good Willy Wonka? Place your golden ticket in the comments below!