Timothée Chalamet’s Smash-Hit Movie Is Finally Coming to Netflix
Netflix is unwrapping Wonka soon, Timothée Chalamet’s acclaimed 2023 fantasy musical from director Paul King—the heartwarming prequel to the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that became a critical and box-office smash.
If you skipped Wonka in theaters and kept waiting for it to hit streaming, here you go: Netflix is adding it on November 1, 2025. Yes, that is a long runway. The date comes via What's on Netflix.
What Wonka actually is (beyond catchy songs and suspicious candy)
Directed by Paul King, this is a prequel to Mel Stuart's 1971 classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. It follows a young Willy who shows up broke but wildly ambitious, gets played by the city's power brokers, and then teams up with Noodle and a crew of fellow outsiders to push back and build his chocolate business from the ground up. It nods to Roald Dahl's books but isn't chained to them, which is part of why it works.
"a breezy two-hour musical comedy."
That's critic Matt Zoller Seitz's take, and he also notes the movie mostly wants to charm you, make you smile, and cue cheers when the villains get theirs. He was into Timothee Chalamet's take on the character too, calling out how he plays young Wonka with a deliberately restrained, lightly mysterious vibe.
Who's in it
- Timothee Chalamet as Willy Wonka
- Calah Lane as Noodle
- Paterson Joseph as Arthur Slugworth
- Matt Lucas as Gerald Prodnose
- Mathew Baynton as Felix Fickelgruber
How it did the first time around
Wonka opened in theaters on December 15, 2023 and became a legit hit: $634.5 million worldwide, with $218.4 million from the U.S. and Canada (per Box Office Mojo). Critics were mostly on board too — it sits at 82% on Rotten Tomatoes from 333 reviews.
One last note on the trail of the news: the Netflix date was flagged by What's on Netflix; this item was previously surfaced by Disheeta Maheshwari at SuperHeroHype and then echoed by ComingSoon. File this under: plan your queue early.