Viral Glasgow ‘Willy Wonka Experience’ Lands Indie Horror-Film Adaptation

Samantha Bergeson
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There wasn’t anything sweet about the unofficial “Wonka” pop-up event in Glasgow, Scotland, and now, that real-life cursed event is getting a horror-movie adaptation. (Sans Timothée Chalamet).

The now-infamous “Willy Wonka Experience” fascinated the internet in early March 2024 after an AI-generated advertisement wildly misled attendees. Photos of the real experience — a barely-decorated warehouse manned by costumed performers dressed in “Wonka” adjacent attire (and that’s being generous) — went viral. Tickets cost £35 (about $44 USD) per person for the experience, which has been deemed the Fyre Festival of 2024. Ticketgoers demanded refunds from the event, and some even called the police. The event was shut down within one day of its opening.

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A breakout character from the botched experience was called The Unknown; the character is now the basis of an upcoming indie horror film. The opportunistic film is set at Kaledonia Pictures and is going into production for a late 2024 release, Bloody Disgusting reported.

The Kaledonia movie follows a renowned illustrator and his wife who are haunted by the tragic death of their son, Charlie, per its logline. Desperate to escape their grief, the couple leave the world behind for the remote Scottish Highlands where an unknowable evil awaits them.

“We are excited to begin production and look forward to sharing more with you as soon as possible,” a Kaledonia Pictures rep told Bloody Disgusting. “We are actually only a few miles from the event, so it is quite surreal to see Glasgow all over social media, worldwide.”

The Unknown is not a character from Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” novel, nor does the character appear in any of the film adaptations. You can thank AI, not human writers, for its existence.

The “Willy Wonka Experience” actor Paul Connell told The Independent that the script provided for the event was “15 pages of AI-generated gibberish,” and introduced the “Unknown [who] is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls.” The actress who played The Unknown at the “Willy Wonka Experience” later shared her side of the story on TikTok.

Since The Unknown isn’t an actual character from musical “Wonka” or any of its parent properties, there is no copyright issue with Warner Bros. to create the original horror feature. Warner Bros. has yet to comment on the Glasgow disaster, which is very much based on its IP; “Wonka” starring Timothée Chalamet was released in December 2023.

The rise in beloved IPs and getting an indie horror twist saw success with “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” which spurred its own cinematic universe. Production company Jagged Edge Productions released a sequel and has also announced a Peter Pan movie.

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