Will massive adjustments at considered one of Hollywood’s main studios result in adjustments within the theme park trade?
Disney and Common could be the largest Hollywood names within the theme park enterprise, however Warner Bros. maintains an enormous presence in themed leisure worldwide, as nicely. Common licenses Harry Potter from Warner Bros., whereas Six Flags owns the rights to Warner Bros.’ DC Comics and Looney Tunes characters. Warner Bros. additionally licenses its title and franchises to branded theme parks in Australia, Spain and the United Arab Emirates, and it maintains rising studio tour points of interest in Burbank and the UK, with a 3rd underneath improvement in Japan.
This month, the enduring Hollywood studio modified arms, as AT&T spun off the corporate into the brand new Warner Bros. Discovery, combining it with the previous Discovery, Inc. — the proprietor of a variety of cable TV networks, together with Animal Planet, HGTV, the Meals Community and its eponym Discovery Channel. That offers the brand new firm an expanded line-up of mental properties (IP) that it may license to theme parks, museums and different points of interest all over the world.
Warner Bros.’ longest relationship within the theme park enterprise has been with Six Flags, which obtained its Warner Bros. licenses in 1984. The previous Time Warner obtained management of Six Flags within the Nineties, solely to promote the chain by the top of that decade. Past a group of award-winning Justice League: Battle for Metropolis interactive darkish rides, Six Flags has not accomplished a lot with its Warner Bros. franchises aside from slap their names on thrill rides and put characters out for meet and greets. Six Flags’ license runs via 2053, in response to its newest annual report, so the 2 firms will probably be tied collectively for fairly some time.
In the meantime, Common has developed Harry Potter into a few of the greatest theme park lands on the earth. Exterior of the US, Los Angeles-based Thinkwell Group designed an indoor Warner Bros. World theme park in Abu Dhabi that gained the Theme Park Insider Award because the world’s greatest park after it opened in 2018.
The Warner Bros. Studio Tour exterior London has gained raves by permitting followers to go to the units the place the Harry Potter films have been filmed. In Burbank, with its hands-on, interactive experiences and new “Motion and Magic Made Right here” exhibition finale, Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood is the perfect stand-alone studio tour in Southern California.
Most just lately, Warner Bros. has licensed the “IT” horror franchise for an escape room expertise in Las Vegas, which occurs to be the one market in North America the place the Six Flags license doesn't apply.
Regardless of all these world-class points of interest, most People solely see Warner Bros. within the parks as character names slapped on Six Flags rides — not the model on world-class immersive experiences that the studio provides elsewhere. As Warner Bros. enters a brand new period with the addition of Discovery IP, will it take this chance to plan for a brand new period for its themed leisure efforts, too?