Netflix’s acquisition of the Roald Dahl Story Company has paid off handsomely with the Oscar-winning Wes Anderson short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, but the streamer is already scraping the bottom of the barrel by developing a Willy Wonka reality show.
Even worse, Netflix doesn’t have a concept for the reality competition series yet. Instead, according to Deadline, it’s holding what’s called a “bake-off” in the entertainment industry, which is when production companies are tasked to pitch ideas.
Thus far, the frontrunners are American Idol producer Fremantle and Wall to Wall Media, the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned company behind the British genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?
Presumably, the show would involve top-hatted competitors vying to win a top prize for the best chocolate, but who knows what the companies could come up with? Perhaps we could get a deranged mix of The Great British Bake Off with Squid Games: The Challenge, Love Is Blind, and Is It Cake?
However the show turns out, it would be hard to top the bait-and-switch “immersive” Willy Wonka experience that went viral for all the wrong reasons in February.