A few lucky (or perhaps unlucky) fans Willy Wonka will be able to take home the scenery from the now infamous Glasgow experience, thanks to a charity auction.
On Thursday, record store Monorail Music in Glasgow, Scotland, announced in an Instagram post that it had acquired three wallpapers for “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” — two with colorful scenes that look like candy and one black-and-white striped “Time Tunnel.” ” background.
“This is real,” Monorail Music wrote alongside photos of its staff posing backstage. “Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience ‘House of the Illuminati’ [original] backgrounds, sales, with us.”
According to the post, record store staff acquired the wallpapers when they were “rescued from the bin by a friend of the store”. All three items are being sold together, according to the store’s eBay listing, with all proceeds going to Medical Aid for the Palestinians, a London-based charity currently raising funds to help Gazans in need of medical care amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas .
‘Nightmare’ Willy Wonka experience leaves children in tears — and prompts families to call the police
To date, the auction has received more than 40 bids, with the current highest bid for the wallpapers set at £595 (or about $765 USD).
Background from ‘Willy’s Chocolate Experience’.
Ebay
What was supposed to be a fun experience for kids quickly went viral in late February after pictures of the event circulated on social media. The photos showed a sparsely decorated warehouse with what some believe to be AI-generated art, as well as actors in cheap costumes working to AI scripts.
The event, organized by House of Illuminati, was to feature “amazing performances” and “surprises at every turn” as part of a “celebration of chocolate in all its wonderful forms”. Guests paid £35 (about $45) to attend, according to the BBC, but upon arrival, children and parents were horrified by the venue, with one attendee saying organizers had “sold a dream and delivered a nightmare”, according to Sky News .
Even the actors who took part in the experience spoke out afterwards, including local Scottish actor Paul Connell — who played Roald Dahl’s iconic character Willy Wonka. The 31-year-old actor said he was given a script full of “AI-generated nonsense,” reports Today.
“People were yelling, people who organized the event were crying,” Connell told the newspaper. “There were fights, people running everywhere – the set was trashed.”
Actor hired for disastrous Willy Wonka experience feels cheated: ‘The whole thing was disrespectful’
Actors such as 29-year-old Kirsty Paterson, who played the now popular Oompa Loompa, were told they could only give each child “one jelly bean and a quarter of a cup of lemonade”.
Connell said the organizer told him at one point, “You’re spending too much time with the kids, we need to sort them out as soon as possible.”
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“By this point I was visibly angry,” he said The Independent. “I thought, now there’s going to be a lot of disappointed kids.”
The media attention surrounding the event also had an effect on some of the actors, according to Paterson.
Viral Oompa Loompa claims actors were not paid for their work in ‘Embarrassing’ Willy Wonka Experience
“I’m not going to lie or sugar coat this: this was enough for me,” Paterson said in an interview with Sup. “It’s funny to me and I can make a humorous joke about it, but the flip side of it is that this is embarrassing for what I do, and I hope it doesn’t tarnish that.”
In addition, the actress stated that the cast of “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” had not yet been paid as of February 28. According to Paterson, the pay was advertised as £500 (about US$631) for two days’ work, although the event ended after only a few hours.
“So it’s like we’re going through all this for nothing,” she added.
House of Illuminati owner and event organizer Billy Coull finally spoke out on March 3, saying The Sunday Times that “everything looked good on paper”.
Willy Wonka-Themed Experience creator apologizes for failed event: ‘Everything looked good on paper’
Coull issued another apology in a March 1 post on the company’s Facebook page and noted that the problems with the event were “solely” his responsibility.
“I understand the disappointment and frustration this has caused and for that I am truly sorry,” he wrote.
Bidding for the Monorail Music auction is set to close on Thursday.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education