Netflix is expanding beyond streaming with the launch of its first permanent Netflix House attractions in the United States. These large-scale venues turn the company’s hit franchises into interactive playgrounds designed for both local fans and destination travelers.
Pretending to be a pirate in an immersive game inspired by the manga One Piece, or wandering through a carnival hosted by Wednesday Addams, is now part of the experience offered inside Netflix’s first theme parks in the United States. For its first “Netflix House,” opening Wednesday, the American streaming giant chose one of the country’s largest shopping malls in King of Prussia, just outside Philadelphia, with locations in Dallas, Texas, set to follow on December 11 and in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2027.
Admission to the nearly 100,000-square-foot venue, decorated around some of the platform’s biggest productions (Bridgerton, Stranger Things, Squid Game, KPop Demon Hunters...), is free.
Activities including mini-golf, a movie theater, a restaurant and a gift shop require paid tickets.
In recent years, Netflix has offered similar short-term pop-up experiences, totaling around forty events in roughly 350 cities.
But with the ongoing challenge of finding spaces large enough for them, “it became clear that we’d have far more flexibility with permanent locations,” explained the company’s Chief Marketing Officer Marian Lee during a press roundtable on Monday.
Netflix chose shopping malls in the Philadelphia and Dallas suburbs, where the attractions will rotate regularly to make each site “an everyday destination” for locals.
Tourists, however, are expected mainly in Las Vegas, where the Strip location will open in two years with a “slightly different program” designed for special visits.
Asked by AFP about the cost of these projects, Marian Lee did not provide “exact figures,” but said it represents “a huge capital investment both in the space and in the construction of the sets.”
Those sets are particularly polished, from the public areas offering endless photo opportunities to the activity rooms themselves.
No similar project is planned outside the United States for now. If that changes, Netflix’s marketing chief says they would “need to rethink the concept” to account for local real-estate realities, tastes and consumer habits.
With AFP
Comments