Netflix fans slam ‘deeply evil’ Willy Wonka series with Gene Wilder recreation
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Netflix has shared the first trailer for their upcoming Willy Wonka reality series, to near-unanimous outrage on social media.
The nine-part competition series The Golden Ticket will hit the service this September and features a recreation of the late Gene Wilder’s voice using artificial intelligence.
Beloved for his lead role in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the actor died in 2016 at the age of 83.
Wilder’s voice has been recreated for the show after obtaining the consent of the Wilder Estate with his wife Karen B Wilder, who said she was ‘delighted’ to introduce her late husband’s ‘magic to a new generation’.
Deadline reported that Netflix worked closely with the AI audio company ElevenLabs to recreate Wilder’s intonation for the series narration.
Actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine came under intense scrutiny last year when both made deals with the company to create virtual versions of their voices. McConaughey is also an investor in it.
In another nod to the 1971 film, Rusty Goffe will reprise his role as an Oompa Loompa in the upcoming competition series.
The Golden Ticket will see 12 contestants each bring a partner along to step through the new iteration of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, after the streamer acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company in 2021.
There they will face various challenges designed to test them ‘physically, mentally, and morally’ before one lucky winner walks away with a prize. Presumably it isn’t a lifetime supply of chocolate, but rather a cash prize of sorts, knowing how these things go.
I will first acknowledge that the production of The Golden Ticket is far superior to the most recent infamous iteration of Willy Wonka in Glasgow. But even that had a smidge of originality, in how bad it was.
This first trailer – a fusion of that iconic set design with what looks like the studio for Family Feud – looks so craven, so degraded of the originality that burst from Roald Dahl’s tale of wondrous invention, it borders on the dystopian.
Once you add in the fact that they have artificially reanimated the late Gene Wilder’s pipes, it crosses that Rubicon.
And it was an unnecessary move when we have two living Wonkas. Netflix might not want the reputational damage of employing Johnny Depp, but with basketball season over, Timothée Chalamet must be free.
Say they didn’t want to pay his no doubt steep fee, you’re telling me they couldn’t dig up a single Gene Wilder impersonator to narrate instead? I think I could rustle up a non-terrible attempt myself.
I am not surprised the reality show has been met with an existential scream online. I scream with them.
The score promises that we will step inside that famed world of pure imagination. But this is no such thing. The Golden Ticket looks like the sparkly autocracy where imagination goes to die and then be reanimated using AI.
But on social media, the trailer for the show was labelled ‘nostalgia slop’ and a clear play to recreate the popularity of the Squid Game reality show, among other less printable things.
Netflix subscribers particularly focused on the recreation of Wilder’s voice with AI, with @DreamLeaf5 describing it as’deeply evil’, while @LilithLovett called it ‘AI necromantic slop’.
‘I am so much angrier than I should be,’ wrote another X user, while Edd Coates wrote: ‘It’s maddening to me that anyone could be okay with this.
‘Five years ago, everyone would have called it horrific and disrespectful. Now we’re just resurrecting the dead for “content”.’
The Golden Ticket will premiere on Netflix on September 23, with a two-part finale on September 30.
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