MAY 2024 | EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT
AS YOU MIGHT expect of the men who co-wrote Wonka, Paul King and Simon Farnaby have spent the morning in thrall to a Warner Bros. prequel about an eccentric young orphan who uses his incredible talents to galvanise an entire city. “We’ve been watching Batman Begins,” confesses King, sitting next to Farnaby in his London office. “We didn’t see it before [making Wonka],” jokes Farnaby. “Or we’d have had loads of gruff-talking BS.”
Hardly. Wonka, the glorious confection starring Timothée Chalamet as Roald Dahl’s kooky chocolatier, is as far removed as you can get from the Dark Knight, and shows that King (who also directs, of course) and Farnaby are more than capable of recreating the magic they conjured up on the beloved Paddington 2 back in 2017; their take on Willy Wonka ploughs a similar warm-and-fuzzy storybook furrow, but connected with audiences worldwide in a way even a kind and polite bear couldn’t, becoming the big hit of the festive season and putting a whole ton of silver sovereigns in their pock-a-lates. Now, as it hits shiny discs and streaming, Empire sits down with King and Farnaby, who’ve worked together previously on the likes of The Mighty Boosh and Bunny And The Bull, to talk about how their writing partnership has evolved and endured.