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The Fantastical World of 'Willy Wonka' is Coming to the Hollywood Bowl With... John Stamos?
John Stamos at Nickelodeon's 2017 Kids' Choice Awards at USC Galen Center on March 11, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)
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If you’ve ever dreamed about getting a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, here’s your chance to nab the next best thing: Scratch-N-Sniff golden tickets to see the classic musical performed live at the Hollywood Bowl as the film plays onscreen.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory In Concert at the Hollywood Bowl: A Live-to-Film Celebration will bring the colorful world of Roald Dahl to stage on November 3 and 4 along with plenty of candy-coated gimmicks to entice your senses. Former Full House hunk John Stamos will sing “Pure Imagination” as the musical’s namesake character, Willy Wonka. Finn Wolfhard, better known as Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things, will play Charlie Bucket, and your favorite parody artist “Weird Al” Yankovic—who headlined the Bowl last summer—will play the Oompa Loompas (it’s unclear whether he’s somehow playing multiple Oompa Loompas).
Stamos might seem like an odd choice for Willy Wonka—you could say the casting decision took some pure imagination, if only because previous adaptations of the children’s book have cast more eccentric, oddball actors like Johnny Depp and Gene Wilder in the role—but Stamos is apparently a diehard fan of the original 1971 movie.
“Every time I watch the movie, and I’ve watched it more than several hundred times, I find something new,” Stamos said in a statement to Variety. “It becomes deeper, weirder, more charming and more of a mystery.”
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Not only does Stamos claim to have seen the movie hundreds of times—a pretty bold claim—but he also said it was the first movie he ever saw. It was so engrossing, he said in the statement, that he filled a grocery bag full of popcorn but then forgot to eat it. The actor and singer spent the summer touring and recording with The Beach Boys and previously performed at the Hollywood Bowl in an adaptation of Hairspray.
The upcoming production of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory will be presented in Smell-O-Rama—which apparently means the tickets are scratch n’ sniff—and there will also be a costume contest and visuals designed by the Southern California artist Shag, according to Variety. Other cast members include L.A.-bred vocalist Elle King as Veruca Salt, singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson as Mrs. Bucket, Richard Kind as Grandpa Joe, and Giancarlo Esposito—better known for peddling a more illicit kind of candy in Breaking Bad—as The Candy Man.
Tickets go on sale September 23, and hopefully won’t be as hard to get as tickets to the chocolate factory.
”Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory In Concert at the Hollywood Bowl: A Live-to-Film Celebration” will be at the Hollywood Bowl on November 3 and 4. Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. and will be available here.
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