Netflix Just Brought Back Gene Wilder Using AI and It Is Wrong for So Many Reasons

Netflix has found a new use for one of cinema’s much-loved performances but nobody wants to see it. The streamer has released the first trailer for Wonka’s The Golden Ticket, a reality competition series based on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factor with a heavy inspiration from 1971’s movie adaptation, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which controversially includes narration from an AI version of Gene Wilder‘s Wonka.

The show itself doesn’t sound like the problem. Set to debut on September 23 with a two-part finale a week later, The Golden Ticket drops 12 “golden ticket” competition winners and their chosen partners into a real-world version of Wonka’s factory, built with many similarities to the sets used in the Wilder-led movie. According to the synopsis, the pairs will face a series of challenges, games, and moral temptations on their journey to try and win a life-changing prize. The series will feature rivers of chocolate, geometrically impossible confessionary, and even features original Oompa Loompa actor Rusty Goffe.

The series looks fun, nostalgic and exactly the kind of thing you would expect from Netflix since their acquisition of Dahl’s vast library of beloved novels and characters. Yet the whole thing had left a sour taste thanks to the inclusion of Wilder’s voice, created with the help of AI company ElevenLabs, who recently came under similar scrutiny over the release their audiobook of The Odyssey with a narration by an AI clone of Michael Caine.

Gene Wilder’s AI Voice is Authorized, but Does That Make It Right?

The first and most obvious problem for many people is simply the fact that the trailer for the series uses some almost recognizable phrases from the movie in a voice that has a likeness to Wilder’s sly and sometimes menacing version of the famous factory owner. However, the same complaint that followed the release of Caine’s The Odyssey reading quickly dominated social media comments regarding this latest celebrity AI creation. It sounds like Wilder but is missing the spark that he brought Wonka and the end result is something lifeless and vaguely robotic. Or, as one response put it, “just gross.”

To its credit, Netflix have not simply tacked Wilder’s AI voice onto the trailer. The clone was made with the blessing of Wilder’s estate, and his widow, Karen B. Wilder, who shared her own statement on the subject at the time of the trailer’s release, expressing her delight for Wilder’s creation to be moving into a new generation. She said, “More than five decades ‌after Gene brought Willy Wonka to life, people of all ages and backgrounds around ​the world continue to find joy, laughter and inspiration in his performance. Gene had a remarkable ability ⁠to bring humour, wonder and heart ⁠into people’s lives, and that connection has endured for generations.”

Netflix Has Made a Glaring Error In Using Wilder’s Wonka

While this is an authorized use of Wilder’s Wonka, and it is not quite the disaster of the infamous Scottish Willy Wonka experience there is another irony to Netflix’s use of the voice that long-term fans of Dahl have also pointed out. Dahl was famously unhappy with the 1971 film, disowning the adaptation after taking issue with the script and casting to the point he also refused to allow Warner Bros. to follow it up with an adaptation of the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

Netflix now owns the Roald Dahl Story Company outright, having bought it in 2021 — and yet, for its big Wonka event, it has chosen to lean on the one screen version of the character the author simply couldn’t stand. Whichever way you cut it, Netflix may have the right to use Wilder’s voice in their new show, but in doing so they have instead faced backlash for disrespecting Dahl’s feelings while expanding their monopoly of his work.

Netflix’s artificial Wilder is heard saying, “There’s no turning back now,” in the new trailer. That is ironically what is worrying everyone right now about the use of AI in the entertainment industry. In many ways, the more AI advances, the murkier the waters become. Wonka’s The Golden Ticket arrives on Netflix on September 23, and it currently unclear how much Wilder’s Wonka will feature in the show itself. Regardless, it is going to be both a crowd-drawing curiosity and point of contention in equal measure.

(featured image: Paramount Pictures)

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