LOS ANGELES, July 2 -- Gene Wilder spent the last decade of his life saying, in various ways, that he wanted to be left alone with the character he had created.

When Warner Bros. and Tim Burton released a new Willy Wonka in 2005, broader and stranger, with Johnny Depp in the purple hat, Wilder did not congratulate them. He told interviewers the remake existed because people were sitting around thinking about how to make money. He had not been asked. He had not wanted to be asked. The original performance, he said more than once, was sufficient.

Netflix was not asking either. On Tuesday, the streaming company released a trailer for "Wonka's The Golden Ticket," a competition reality series set inside a full-scale Willy Wonka Chocolate Fac...