Just because someone’s fictional, that doesn’t mean they can’t be involved in juicy scandal! Here’s all the gossip on your favorite fantasy characters:

What happened to the kids from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the forty-some years since the book was published? The Poison Pen decided to find out!

• Despite some news reports to the contrary, Veruca Salt, after being thrown down the “bad nut” chute by squirrels, was, in fact, killed in the Chocolate Factory incinerator — a scandal that resulted in Willy Wonka’s eventual conviction for manslaughter and 26-year prison sentence (where, for a time, he famously shared a cell with Jack Kevorkian).

• Violet Beauregarde turned to a career in acting, but struggled for years to find roles due mostly to the fact that her skin was blue. But she has recently seen her fortunes turn with her role as Mo’at, the only non-CGI-created Na’vi character in Avatar, and a prominent role in the upcoming Smurfs movie.

• After being stretched by the Gum Stretcher, Mike Teevee ended up 8′9″ tall and, as Willy Wonky predicted, was heavily recruited by college basketball teams, though Teevee turned them all down, instead devoting his life to researching the “human teleportation” technology he had inadvertently pioneered with Willy Wonka’s “Chocolate Television” invention. Alas, a mishap in the lab led to his exchanging his DNA with that of a fly, and Teevee, horrified that he was now half-fly, ended up squishing himself under a hydraulic press. The resulting corpse ended up a record 18′4″ tall.

• Inspired by Wilson Phillips singer Carnie Wilson’s success with gastric bypass surgery, Augustus Gloop opted for the surgery too, though, like Carnie, he continued to struggle with food. Still, sensing a kindred soul, Carnie invited Augustus to join Wilson Phillips, and the group toured briefly under the name Wilson Phillips Gloop, but Augustus was later booted from the band when he ate their grand piano.
  

• And Charlie Bucket has perhaps the saddest post-Chocolate Factory story. Inheriting the Wonka chocolate factory from Willy Wonka, he quickly drove it into ruin with poor business choices: flaming lollipops and “chocolate doggy-doo-doos” were notorious disasters, but Bucket did have some minor success with a line of edible Jockey shorts. Working conditions at the Wonka Factory got so bad that at one point the Oompa Loompas rioted, provoking a response that turned violent and left six Loompas dead; Bucket remained alive only as a result of an escape via the Great Glass Elevator. Determined to leave his notoriety behind, Bucket later changed his name and did find some initial success in the business realm, though that too eventually unraveled in spectacular fashion. Unknown to many, his new name was Bernie Madoff.

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Q: So Ridley Scott, the man who swore he’d never do a sequel to Alien, is now doing a prequel. But truthfully: isn’t the success of the Aliens movies more attributable to James Cameron’s sequel? — Mason, Napa, CA

First things first. Here’s what Ridley Scott has said about the movie, which is currently in development:

It’s set in 2085, about 30 years before Sigourney [Weaver's character Ellen Ripley]. It’s fundamentally about going out to find out ‘Who the hell was that Space Jockey?’ The guy who was sitting in the chair in the alien vehicle — there was a giant fellow sitting in a seat on what looked to be either a piece of technology or an astronomer’s chair. Remember that? And our man [Tom Skerritt as Captain Dallas] climbs up and says “There’s been an explosion in his chest from the inside out — what was that?” I’m basically explaining who that Space Jockey — we call him the Space Jockey — I’m explaining who the space jockeys were.

I don’t agree with you completely, Mason, that it is James Cameron who is responsible for the “iconic” nature of the Alien franchise — I think Ridley Scott’s original movie is damn good, and was actually far more influential to film in general than Cameron’s sequel (but Cameron, of course, shook things up just as much, if not more, with his Terminator franchise, and is doing it again with Avatar).

Part of what made Aliens work, in the Oracle’s opinion, is that Cameron switched genres — from “horror” to “action” — making the movie seem fresh and original.

Then, of course, the studio reverted to form with a series of ever-more-lame sequels.

But it sounds to me like what Scott is trying to do with his prequel is reinvent the series again. “I’ve always avoided sequels, unless I felt there was something fresh,” he says.

It probably won’t work — but hey, anything’s better than another Alien Versus Predator.

The Great Glass Elevator

Q: Why hasn’t there ever been a movie version of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the book sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? — Eve, Duluth, MN

A: Because unlike a lot of authors, Roald Dahl kept tight control over the rights to his works. Since he hated the 1971 movie version of his book, the retitled Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – he felt it strayed too far from Charlie and changed too much of the story — he never allowed anyone to produce a sequel.

Since then, Dahl’s heirs, who now control those expansive rights, have been just as protective of his books, only eventually allowing the 2005 movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Tim Burton agreed to direct it, and even then, only when everyone involved agreed to stay closer to the story in the book (although — it must be said — in the Oracle’s opinion, Burton’s movie version made Charlie even more of a minor character in his own story than the 1971 movie!).

Burton has already flatly ruled out ever making Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (though, as with the 1971 film, the elevator can be seen at the end of his movie). This may not be a bad thing: in the Oracle’s opinion, Dahl’s sequel is greatly inferior to the original.

That said, none of this means it won’t ever get made by some other director, possibly with Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. It just means it may take years to please those picky Dahl heirs.

Q: Steampunk, steampunk, steampunk! All day long I hear how great steampunk is at this or how wonderful steampunk did that! My (serious) question is: why now? Why did it finally break through to the mainstream? — Ed, Portland, OR

Tomorrowland

A: Steampunk is, of course, sci-fi or fantasy set in a 19th century, Industrial Revolution-esque world of steam power — like the speculative works of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells (which, of course, were wholly futuristic for their time, but only included elements such as steam power because that was the prevailing technology of the day).

But I’m not sure it’s just breaking through now.

Steampunk first became popular in the mid-1980s with the films of Terry Gilliam, but it didn’t have an actual name until the early 1990s. The Alan Moore comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentleman brought the sub-genre even more attention in 1999.

And when Disneyland redesigned their dated-looking Tomorrowland in 1998, rather than try to predict what the notoriously unpredictable future might look like, they cleverly went with a retro steampunk look.

With SyFy’s Warehouse 13 and their new webseries Riese, steampunk is definitely making a resurgence, but I think that might simply be because science fiction is now so ubiquitous in our lives that even sub-genres are getting their day in the sun.

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A creature from Pan’s Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro, the Oscar-nominated director of Pan’s Labyrinth, is attached to direct an animated version of the Roald Dahl book, The Witches. The project was originally going to be directed by Pan’s Labyrinth producer Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), who will now produce.

“I am involved with Guillermo Del Toro [on The Witches],” Cuaron told Empire Magazine, “but as a producer, not director. I think it started because I’ve always wanted to do a version of Roald Dahl’s very naughty Uncle Oswald [featured in many Dahl short stories]. So we were talking to [Dahl's daughter] Lucy Dahl, when we got onto the subject of The Witches. Then Guillermo wrote this amazing screenplay really quickly.”

The book tells the story of an orphaned boy and his efforts to defeat the hidden organization of evil witches determined to eradicate all children. It was previously filmed as a live-action 1990 movie starring Angelica Houston.

Angelica Houston in The Witches (1990)

“It won’t be like the original Nicholas Roeg version, which was a beautiful film,” Cuaron said. “Guillermo wants to do it completely in stop- motion animation. I’m excited about it.”

Del Toro is extraordinarily busy man, currently attached to direct a host of fantasy-themed movies, including Deadman, about the ghost of circus acrobat (scheduled for release in 2010); Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, about a girl who discovers strange creatures in her new house (scheduled for release in 2011); and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, and the two-part version of The Hobbit that will serve as a prequel to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (all tentatively scheduled for release in 2012).

“I really hope we can put it together,” Cuaran said of The Witches project, which will hopefully be out in 2011.