Netflix’s new Wonka series is bonkers. It was even crazier in real life

Chris Hemsworth was in the building but he wasn’t the buzziest news. No shade intended towards the superstar who was filming the coming action film Subversive but the excitement at Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast was over Gene Wilder and a chocolate river.Wilder, of course, is dead but, through the wiles of AI – and with his estate’s blessing – the late actor is once again the voice of the quirky confectioner in purple. He’s the unseen host of Netflix’s Wonka’s The Golden Ticket. The latest take on the mad genius of candy – following three movies, an opera, a ballet and a Broadway show – is a reality series. The show’s nine episodes put contestants through sticky challenges in their quest to win $US3 million ($4.2 million).“We ended up on the Gold Coast for several reasons,” says Emer Harkin, co-showrunner and an executive producer. “The studios are phenomenal and this is what we were looking for. There was availability. The production company making the show for Netflix is also based out of Sydney and we’re producing the show out of Australia. So all of those things together sort of just made it like a package.”Working on anything Wonka-related was also a lure for everyone involved.Contestants (including Austin, Tatum and Kellye pictured here) sleep and compete in the factory in Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.Netflix“We’re definitely inspired by the 1971 movie,” Harkin says. “But with that comes such responsibility. This is such a revered, adored text. The movie has been such a blueprint of all of our growing up – and my Christmas mornings in particular.”Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory wasn’t a box-office hit when it premiered in 1971, seven years after Roald Dahl published the classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But the film eventually became beloved.Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in the movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The story followed winners of a golden ticket, emblazoned with a “W”, as they toured Wonka’s mysterious factory. The children who found the ticket tucked into chocolate bars were mannerless little monsters, except for lovely, impoverished Charlie, whose sole treat each birthday was a Wonka bar.Instead of casting children and their guardians in another rendition, the question became how to translate a well-known story into an engaging reality show. Netflix – which bought the rights to Dahl’s works – began with 12 adults from the US, picked from reality contestant pools. Each received a coveted golden ticket and brought a partner. Duos include a mother and son, two father-daughter pairs, best friends, romantic partners, and work pals. One duo echoes the original story: a grandfather and grandson.Friends Austin and Ziad in the first episode of Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.NetflixThe prizemoney inspires plenty of plotting and vitriol as contestants live on the sprawling set. They sleep in beds designed to look like marshmallows, and the factory is pure steampunk. When people need to travel inside it, they step into the Wonkavator – a contraption designed to feel like it moves horizontally, vertically and even diagonally.“We could rock it a bit and we blew air into it as well, to give people a sense that something was going on, but it’s mainly the strong visuals in there that make you feel like you’re moving,” says Chris Batson, production designer of the optical illusion elevator.‘It was posh [Ferrero Rocher] grass … I think I put on a few kilos.’Chris Batson, production designer, on the edible set of Wonka’s The Golden TicketBatson, a Sydney native who lectures at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, supervised a huge art department of 120 people for this series. He updated the Wonkatania, a boat that runs on a river of real chocolate – 102,206 litres of it – cascading from a chocolate waterfall. This unfolds in the 40,000-square-foot (3700-square-metre) chocolate factory, which features chocolate bricks on walkways and giant edible candy mushrooms sprouting amid edible lemony grass.The set of Wonka’s The Golden Ticket featured grass made from Ferrero Rocher chocolate.NetflixLast year Netflix brought a few journalists and influencers to tour this fun set. Contestants had yet to arrive, so it was just an original Oompa Loompa, Rusty Goffe, and his son Ben exploring the set. Rusty Goffe reflected on how much better this river smelled than the film’s brown waterway. His son taught visitors an often-underappreciated life skill: the Oompa Loompa dance.Challenges begin with the original teams walking down a door-lined corridor, designed to throw them off balance. By the end of the hallway the ceiling is perhaps a metre from the floor. Between the scrunched-up contestants is a gumball machine that spits out purple and gold marzipan balls.As they eat the sweets a cold fog shrouds the room, and whoosh! One disappears, rushed through a door. Those who vanish find themselves encased in a huge ball and placed in a gigantic gumball machine. The object of that challenge is to free your partner.Mirroring the original story, contestants face a number of physical challenges.NetflixFolks tend to go missing a lot on the set – whether through this or the Wonkavision, a television the size of a room. Hiring a magician to advise proved useful.Adam Mada, originally from Canberra, recalls how producers initially said, “We want people to disappear. We want all these things to happen. Is it even possible? And I went, ‘Yes’. I typically say yes to everything and then figure it out.”An on-set magician advised how to make people disappear via Wonkavision.NetflixStill, a reality series presented issues movies don’t, namely, “we’re not working with trained actors”, Mada says. “They’re not even people that we’ve coached beforehand.”The magic needed to spring from the challenges and the set.“It’s the biggest studio we have in Australia and we filmed every inch of it,” Batson says. “The construction manager, who’s done many American-Australian movies in the studio, said it’s the biggest thing they’ve seen and done.”Batson developed a fondness for Wonka grass; it’s green but made of Ferrero Rocher chocolate with a citrusy flavour. “It was posh grass,” he says. “I think I put on a few kilos with that.”Despite the stress of keeping to a tight 13-week deadline, Batson said Wonka’s The Golden Ticket was a fairy tale to work on.“Watching this movie – and movies like this – as a creative kid actually helped me decide what I was going to do,” Batson says. “You wait a long time in your career to get an opportunity to show your craft and what you’ve learned. And this was one of those.”The writer travelled to the Gold Coast as a guest of Netflix.Wonka’s the Golden Ticket is streaming now on Netflix. Want more TV? We’ve got you.Newsletter: Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.September streaming guide: All the exciting new shows to watch this month.Movie guide: More than 200 handpicked hits from all the major streamers.Is Shaun Micallef’s son a nepo baby? With their new TV show, he explains, that’s kind of the point.Anthony Bourdain: Why nothing beats the wild, profane and heartbreaking TV made by this world-famous chef.Watch: Binged The Airport Chaplain? Meet the man who inspired the show.