One of the biggest viral sensations of the past few weeks has been Glasgow’s “Willy Wonka Experience.” It was a disastrous event in which parents paid $35 per ticket to visit what was supposed to be a replica of the famous Chocolate Factory as magically depicted in the original 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder and then replicated in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and just last year in the musical Wonka. However, unlike those worlds of pure imagination, attendees of the “Willy Wonka Experience” found a mostly empty warehouse with a few scattered decorations and three employees impersonating Wonka, an Oompa Looma, and for some reason, a scary person in a cloak and silver mask.
Outraged parents threatened to call the police and this fiasco has been compared to the infamous Fyre Festival.
In case you’ve been living under a giant chunk of rock candy, here is a look at the debacle:
Of course, horror movie studios can’t not beat a dead horse. This event took place in Scotland, and that nation’s Kaledonia Pictures has announced The Unknown, a horror flick based on the “Willy Wonka Experience.” The film will be based around the silver-faced character that traumatized children who attended the “Wonka Experience.”
According to Kaledonia Pictures:
“The film, gearing up for production and a late 2024 release, follows a renowned illustrator and his wife who are haunted by the tragic death of their son, Charlie. Desperate to escape their grief, the couple leave the world behind for the remote Scottish Highlands – where an unknowable evil awaits them.”
The studio added:
“We are excited to begin production and look forward to sharing more with you as soon as possible. We are actually only a few miles from the event, so it is quite surreal to see Glasgow all over social media, worldwide.”
The studio hopes to get The Unknown into theaters later this year. I mean… it looks like the event itself took about a week to throw together. The film version shouldn’t take that long… or cost that much money.
Will you be checking this movie out? Or will the buzz have died by then?
