Lickable wallpaper. An edible garden replete with gummy foliage. A chocolate river made of 25,000 gallons of chocolate goop.
Nods to the “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” films appear everywhere in Netflix’s new reality competition show “Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.”
But the show, which debuted on the streamer Wednesday, also embraces the darker elements of Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s book and subsequent films. Unlike the original story, which ultimately rewards protagonist Charlie for his humility and lack of greed after a tour of Wonka’s whimsical chocolate factory, Netflix’s series incentivizes contestants to scheme and strategize to win a $3 million prize.
“This is the modern-day take on the movie, so we weren’t really ever trying to be the morality police. We never ever wanted to set out to be the producers that dictated who behaved well and who behaved poorly,” said showrunner Emer Harkin. “Because let’s be real, we’re all human. We all make mistakes. We all misbehave. We seek redemption. We all have our inflected storylines, and so that was important for us.”
Yet when the trailer dropped earlier this year, fans of the pop culture classic appeared less preoccupied with the reality twist on the story than with another creative choice: the use of generative AI to replicate the late Gene Wilder’s voice from the original 1971 film.
“A whole new generation of real-life Golden Ticket holders will compete for a life-changing prize or say a most unfortunate goodbye,” the AI-generated voice of Wilder says in the series. “Marvel at the magic you remember and delight in my newest wonders beyond imagination. The most extraordinary competition on Earth is about to begin.”
The decision is one that Harkin and co-showrunner Alison Holloway stand behind, saying the use of Wilder’s likeness meant to honor him, not diminish his legacy. It was done with explicit approval, and encouragement, from his estate and wife.
“The more we developed the series, the more we kept thinking: What would Wonka do at this point? What would Wonka say? i.e., What would Gene Wilder say?” Holloway said. “So it became clear to us that Gene Wilder was perhaps the only voice that could do this.”
No in-person hosts appear in the show, but the disembodied AI-generated replica of Wilder’s voice floats in every so often to announce new challenges and contestant terminations.
The emerging use of generative AI in Hollywood has stirred pushback from film industry workers, who say they’re worried about loss of labor in an already dismal market for entertainment jobs.
When the “Wonka” reality show trailer was released, some fans online suggested that Wilder wouldn’t have signed off on the project if he were alive today, pointing to how he criticized the 2005 “Wonka” remake.
Holloway said she understands and shares people’s concerns over AI use. But receiving support from Wilder’s widow, Karen Boyer, made her feel at peace with the decision to proceed with the idea.
“I think we have to believe that the people who loved him the most want this to happen,” Holloway said. “And of course, it’s out of total respect for his legacy that we’ve gone to such lengths to get it as best as we can.”
In order for the show to capture the cadence, the tone and the “whimsy” of Wilder’s voice, the team behind the show sifted through hours of Wilder’s audiobooks, which Boyer provided to them. Netflix partnered with the AI voice generation company ElevenLabs, which has been making inroads in Hollywood in recent years collaborating with both studios and celebrities.
To bring the fictional world to life, Netflix employed a team of working magicians to make the “magic” feel real to the contestants.
The competitors, who earned their entry onto the show by finding a golden ticket hidden within a Wonka-themed chocolate bar, arrive at the giant chocolate factory to face off in a phantasmagoria of dramatic candy-colored challenges.
In the first challenge of the show, some contestants disappeared in a puff of fog while sitting right beside their partners — extracting reactions that the showrunners said “had to be absolutely authentic.”
“We watched that movie over and over and over again, and it gave us the template for the 2026 social experiment,” Holloway said. “We hope we’ve captured all the nostalgia … the magic that was always there, the unpredictability that was always there, the sort of darkness that was always there.”
