From Wednesday 23rd September,
Netflix
On paper this is a pretty perfect idea for an eliminatory reality competition seeing as the original Roald Dahl book is basically sort of structured a little bit like one anyway (Agatha Christie basically invented the eliminatory reality TV gameshow with And Then There Were None in 1939 – there’s no Cowell without Christie! Put that on a T-shirt). This one sees 12 golden ticket winners and their partners enter the chocolate factory where through tests of skill, cunning, morality and so on one of them will win, quote, “a lifetime’s supply of money” which has been left deliberately vague so could range from anything up to Squid Games Challenge millions in generational wealth to £10 a month for the rest of your life.
The set looks great, the idea appealing, but the voiceover likely to attract some attention – it’s an AI recreation of Gene Wilder as Wonka with his family’s blessing. Gene WAIlder, if you will. At the very least this will be an interesting test case on whether the public in general are on board with this sort of thing or not. It certainly feels like a choice, but if this flops it will be difficult to definitively know if that was the reason or not.
Let us know what you think in the comments!
Sitting through it. “Lifetime supply of money” is a “six-figure salary for 30 years” which Wildervoice says is “about three million dollars.”
So that answers that question.
Speculating here, but given what’s been said, I wonder if the prize is a monthly income similar to the UK Lotto’s Set for Life – $10,000 paid monthly for 30 years. That would fulfil the criteria of “six-figure salary” ($120,000 per year) and would equate to an on-paper value of $3.6m, though since prize winnings in the US are taxed, the actual take-home figure would be far less and more in the ballpark of “roughly three million”.
Frustrating this, really. Love the visual creativity but the games are basically Beast Games S1 But In Pairs – immediately getting them to vote for each other doesn’t feel very Wonka although does feel quite trite, pretending they’re inside giant gumballs better in theory than in practice and surely you do the Oompa Loompa song on an elimination? And then Nick Cannon turns up.
You can hear the synthesis In WAIkder so it doesn’t quite work.
Still, nice to see Rusty Goffe from Live TV’s Britain’s Bounciest Weather.
The bit in the honeyhives is more like what it should have been all along really, less politicking, more challenges based around unusual places in the factory.
Willy Wonka Stop Crying At Everything Every Five Minutes Challenge