Wonkavision Is Becoming Real: How Netflix Is Bringing Holograms Into the Mainstream
More than 50 years after Willy Wonka introduced audiences to Wonkavision, Netflix has turned the idea into part of a real television production using holographic hosts.
For more than half a century, Wonkavision belonged firmly to science fiction.
In the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Mike Teevee steps in front of Wonka's extraordinary machine and is transmitted across the room, appearing inside a television set. It was absurd, magical and deliberately impossible.
Now, in Netflix's new reality competition series Wonka's The Golden Ticket, part of that idea has moved from fiction into production reality. The show's Wonkavision 2.0 segments feature Howie Mandel, Nick Cannon and Wayne Brady appearing as holographic hosts inside the Chocolate Factory.
That is a fun creative decision for the show. It is also a significant moment for the wider hologram industry.
From Movie Prop to Working Technology
The original Wonkavision was supposed to feel impossible. Wonka describes objects being broken into millions of tiny pieces, transmitted through the air and reconstructed somewhere else.
Netflix's version does not attempt anything quite that dramatic. Instead, the production uses modern holographic display technology from Proto Hologram to create the illusion that celebrity hosts are physically present inside the Wonkavision environment.
Reporting on the production says Mandel, Cannon and Brady were filmed at Proto's California headquarters using a 4K camera, controlled lighting and a white background. The footage was processed for life-size presentation inside Proto displays on the Australian set, while contestants could interact with the hosts through a live feed. Yahoo's report on the production describes Proto's display as approximately 7.4 feet tall and 4.5 feet wide.
That distinction matters. The host is not simply another face on a conventional television. The creative objective is presence: making a remote person feel as though they have entered the room.
Netflix Could Have Used a Normal Screen
Perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what Netflix did not do.
The production could have placed the celebrity hosts on ordinary televisions. It could have used LED walls. It could have created the entire effect in post-production. All of those would have been familiar and technically straightforward ways of bringing a remote presenter into a television show.
Instead, the producers chose holographic presence.
Netflix's own Tudum guide describes Wonkavision 2.0 as the setting for games including "Wheel of Misfortune," "Bubble Jeopardy" and "Steal or no Steal," hosted by Mandel, Cannon and Brady appearing via hologram.
The production also hired Australian magician and illusion designer Adam Mada to create effects that allowed contestants to appear to disappear and move between environments without relying on camera cuts or post-production. Mada has explained that the illusion had to work for both the cameras and the contestants physically standing inside the set.
It is an important reminder that sometimes the value of technology is not simply more resolution or a larger screen. It is the way the audience feels about what it is seeing.
The $3 Million Chocolate Factory
Wonka's The Golden Ticket launched on Netflix in September 2026 as a nine-episode competition series. Twelve Golden Ticket winners enter the factory with a partner and face a sequence of physical, mental and strategic challenges.
The production goes far beyond a simple game-show set. Netflix recreated recognisable parts of the Wonka universe, including the chocolate river, edible wallpaper, Everlasting Gobstoppers and the all-white Wonkavision studio. The competition ultimately carries a $3 million prize.
That mixture of physical sets, practical illusions, real contestants and holographic people is particularly interesting. Technology is not replacing the physical environment. It is becoming another believable layer within it.
Science Fiction Has Been Preparing Us for Holograms for Decades
Wonka is far from the only fictional world that imagined communication moving beyond a flat screen.
Star Wars gave generations of viewers holographic messages and remote presence. Iron Man surrounded Tony Stark with spatial interfaces and three-dimensional information. Science fiction has repeatedly imagined a world where people, objects and information can appear in space rather than being trapped inside rectangles.
For decades, audiences understood the idea before the technology was commercially practical.
That familiarity gives the modern hologram industry an unusual advantage. A life-size person appearing inside a holographic display needs surprisingly little explanation. The visual language has already been taught to us by popular culture.
What Happens When Wonkavision Leaves the Chocolate Factory?
This is where the story becomes more interesting than television.
The same fundamental idea can be applied almost anywhere that communication currently relies on a conventional screen. A CEO can appear at an event without travelling to the venue. A celebrity can launch a product across multiple markets. An expert can present from another continent. A multilingual AI avatar can welcome visitors, answer questions or provide training. A retailer can bring a product specialist into a store on demand.
Museums, airports, shopping centres, exhibitions, corporate spaces and retail environments can all use holographic presence in different ways.
These are applications that companies including Proto and Miirage are developing today.
And competition between companies in an emerging category is a positive sign. It means the conversation can move away from "Can this be done?" and towards the much more valuable question: "What should we do with it?"
The Real Golden Ticket Is Normalisation
Perhaps the most valuable part of Wonka's The Golden Ticket for the hologram industry has very little to do with the hardware itself.
It is normalisation.
Netflix viewers are watching a mainstream entertainment production in which holographic people are not presented primarily as a technology demonstration. The holograms simply have a job to do. They host the game.
That is an important transition for any emerging technology. Eventually, the most successful technologies stop being impressive simply because they exist. They become useful tools for communication, entertainment and experience.
At Miirage, that is where we believe holographic technology is heading.
The future is unlikely to involve holograms replacing every conventional screen. Instead, holographic displays can occupy the moments when presence matters: when a brand wants somebody to stop, when an audience needs to pay attention, when a remote person should feel physically present, or when an AI assistant needs a face and a body rather than another text box.
Or, occasionally, when you need to beam a celebrity into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.
More than 50 years after Mike Teevee stepped inside Wonkavision, that future suddenly feels considerably less fictional.
When holograms stop being the story and simply become part of the experience, the technology has started to become mainstream.