When it comes to intellectual property (IP), it’s tough to beat The Walt Disney Company. Not only does Disney have over a century of its own, homemade IPs and definitive fairytale adaptations to tout (everything from Mickey Mouse to Maleficent; The Little Mermaid to Mirabel) but decades of high profile, high-cost acquisitions have armed Disney with priceless character portfolios from ABC, The Muppets, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and 20th Century. It all adds up to a roster of stories, characters, and brands that make Disney the one to beat in the “IP Wars” that power merchandising, streaming, and the box office.
But in the last few decades, Disney’s meteoric acquisitions have been seen and felt in their theme parks, too. Don’t misunderstand. We’re not huge fans of how Disney Parks have gone decades without original rides, or how the Parks seem to be “buckets” meant to collection from Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars instead of creating new stories all their own… But there’s no question that as a battlefront in the IP Wars, theme parks have become the newest places to see beloved, blockbuster stories come to life.
But they aren’t alone.
Take a look at the recently-opened Universal Studios Beijing, which borrows the “Islands of Adventure” layout, but stocks those “islands” with hot-off-the-presses, big-budget, high-earning franchises – lands themed to Transformers, Despicable Me, Jurassic World, Harry Potter, and Kung Fu Panda. You’ll also see it in studios eager to license their properties to newly-arisen parks across Asia and the Middle East, like Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi.
And now, as the IP War’s battle of the theme park “Living Lands” rages on, it got us thinking… What other Studios could conceivably jump into the theme park game…? And what might we find there if they did?
1. Netflixland
THE STREAMING STORY: The OG of streaming giants has had its ups and ups and ups… and maybe now, some serious downs. From a DVD-by-mail service to its current place as the progenitor streaming service, Netflix is a behemoth. The service launched its first Original Series a decade ago. Even as shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black became serious hits (and even award-winners), Netflix Originals were still a rarity on the site… Today? Not so much. In 2021, the company reportedly spent over $5 billion on the creation of original content… which is expected to become more and more important to the service as Disney, Universal, Paramount, and Warner Discovery let licensing deals expire to return shows and films to their own streaming services.
As of 2022, Netflix has 221 million subscribers – the equivalent of the entire country of Brazil, and then some. For a time during the pandemic, Netflix’s market cap was higher than Disney’s, officially making this single streaming service “worth” more than the entire Walt Disney Company.
Not everything’s peachy, though. Once earning a reputation for “saving” shows that networks had given up on, the tables have turned and Netflix is now known for its brutal, ruthless cancellations of fan-favorite shows the second the algorithm turns on them… all while generating limitless amounts of unwatchable junk; “content for content’s sake.” Netflix took a huge hit this year when the service reported its first ever subscriber loss (a meager 200,000 – less than 1%), responding by instantly raising prices, cutting jobs, and canceling projects as it grappled with the first financial market indication that it wasn’t the only kid in town anymore. And with lots of competition, Netflix’s share of the market (above) has steadily decreased.
IN THE PARK: The good news for Netflix is that its massive (and growing) portfolio of originals has some that instantly lend themselves to coming to life in a “Netflixland.”
Bridgerton may seem an odd choice for a theme park given that the scandalous series (from ABC primetime favorite Shonda Rimes – creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder) is… well… best watched with headphones once the kids are asleep…
But aside from its steamy love scenes, Bridgerton actually brings to life a world that would be gorgeous to visit; a sort of super-saturated English countryside of cobblestone towns awash in ivy and lavender; great estates bathed in pastels; living walls, floral arrangements, pastries, tea gardens, and greenhouses. The whole thing reeks of fantasy and yet feels habitable – maybe a perfect place for a theme park to bring to life.
Netflix is also in the superhero game. The Umbrella Academy is based on the Dark Horse comic book series of the same name (created in part by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance).
A sort of on-the-nose combination of X-Men and A Series of Unfortunate Events, the series follows a dysfunctional family of super-powered twenty-somethings who set off to avert the apocalypse… a few times. With seasons set in modern day as well as a Dallas of the 1960s, the show definitely lends itself to being a fourth-wall-breaking, stylish new entry in the “superhero land” genre.
Somehow, it was Netflix that funded The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance – a sequel series to Jim Henson’s absolutely fascinating 1982 dark fantasy film The Dark Crystal.
Set in the high fantasy world of Thra, the series follows Gelflings who must unite their elemental clans to overthrow the evil Skeksis – reptilian overlords formed when the Crystal shattered a millennium ago. The settings, characters, and creatures of The Dark Crystal are as captivating as Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Oz, or The Chronicles of Narnia… to see this world – envisioned by Jim Henson and Frank Oz – come to life would be breathtaking.
Through a long-running partnership, Netflix was the streaming home for shows produced by DreamWorks Animation Television beginning in 2013. But in 2018, Netflix announced that they would begin producing their own animated features and shows via an in-house studio called Netflix Animation. The first film produced by the studio was Klaus – an origin story of Santa Claus set in a 19th century Norway.
Nominated for an Academy Award and sweeping the Annies, the film has earned universal critical acclaim for its gorgeous hand-drawn animation. It even beat the same year’s Toy Story 4 to be named Animation Magazine’s film of the year!
It’s also not the only Netflix animated feature that would be a great choice for a theme park land. Released in October 2020, Over the Moon had all the makings of a modern animation masterpiece.
The film follows an adventurous young girl named Fei Fei who’s inspired by her culture’s stories of the moon goddess Chang’e to build a rocket to the moon. Notably, the film was directed by Glen Keane – Disney Legend known for being a lead animator on The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan, and Tangled, literally defining the style of the Disney Renaissance.
Ultimately, Over the Moon arguably proved to be a little uneven. A wonderful and enchanting first act ends with Fei Fei reaching the moon, only to find that… the moon goddess is a wannabe pop star with stellar backup dancers? It all wraps up meaningfully, and you can feel Keane’s Disney touch throughout. But coming on the heels of Moana, Coco, and Frozen 2 it certainly feels like it just doesn’t quite get to the moon. Regardless, both Fei Fei’s Chinese village and the technicolor, Day-glo moon city of Lunaria beyond would make sensational environments for Netflixland…
Of course, there’s zero doubt what the anchor land of Netflixland would be based on: Stranger Things is the runaway hit of Netflix’s streaming lineup.
It’s got everything the Netflix algorithm tells it to have: plucky pre-teen nerds, an ’80s setting and soundtrack, monsters, powerful female heroes, sci-fi, and Winona Ryder. Set in the small town of Hawkins, Indiana, the series traces the results of a local lab’s experiment that accidentally opens a portal into “The Upside Down,” a dark, decomposing alternate Earth populated by dark interdimensional creatures.
Season after season, a group of local kids (lead by the telekinetic “Eleven”) have to set down their Dungeons & Dragons and Kate Bush cassettes and face off against the increasingly-sentient creatures of the Upside Down, tackling new mysteries at every turn. With iconic locales throughout Hawkins (including the Starcourt Mall that serves as an ’80s fever dream setting for all of season 3), memorable creatures (like the Demogorgon, Mind-Flayer, and Vecna), the highly-terrifying Upside Down that could serve as a great dark ride setting, and even in-universe food (hello, Scoops Ahoy and Eggo Waffles) it’s practically tailor-made to be the centerpiece of Netflixland.
OTHER THINGS TO THINK ABOUT: Attractions based on Arrested Development? The Haunting of Hill House? The Witcher? Locke & Key? Squid Game?
2. HBO World
THE STREAMING STORY: HBO (Home Box Office) has been around since the ’70s, but was purchased by Time Warner in 1989 (just about when Time Warner also began taking an interest in Six Flags). Still, the cable network only really garnered widespread critical success with the three year run of 1997’s Oz, 1998’s Sex and the City, and 1999’s The Sopranos – all of which exemplified what cable networks could do without the censorship of network TV. That string of hits continued into the 2000s with The Wire, Six Feet Under, True Blood, and then of course, Game of Thrones.
In what turned out to be a very unwise move, telecommunications giant AT&T purchased Time Warner in 2017 for an incomprehensible $108 billion (the price Disney paid for The Muppets, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox combined).
HBO’s entry into the streaming sphere was somewhat messy. When HBO Max was announced, the service was a third HBO streaming service alongside HBO Go and HBO Now (with HBO Max meant to replace the former… Or is it the latter?). In any case, HBO Max officially launched in May 2020 (good timing given the pandemic), becoming the de facto way to access HBO and Warner Bros. content on demand. For $15 a month in the U.S., it’s among the most expensive streamers… but then again, HBO is a prestige brand. (Surely, you’d pay less for a service with the same material, but called Warner Bros+.)
That was reversed in 2021 when AT&T spun off Warner Media (including HBO) into a separate company, merging with Discovery to create Warner Discovery. (It’s anticipated that eventually, Warner’s HBO Max will also inherit content from Discovery+ – another streaming era content consolidation.) Until then, our imagined “HBO World” would pull from the portfolios of Warner Bros. and HBO itself… So what might we find?
IN THE PARK: First we have to address the elephant(s) in the room. Both outside and inside of the HBO Max bubble, Warner Bros.’ two most iconic intellectual properties are – of course – Looney Tunes and DC Heroes. It’s hard to know if either would be present in “HBO World” since – through some ownership transitions, inherentences, and licensing deals – both are currently used in Six Flags parks across North America.
Obviously, that’s a shame for our imaginary “HBO World,” because it would be really, really nice to see these two timeless intellectual properties given big-budget, Wizarding World-style projects. Of course, particularly in DC’s case, it’s also not as easy as it seems. Despite nominally being Warner’s clear counterpart to Disney’s “Marvel Cinematic Universe,” the so-called “DC Extended Universe” of films is uneven at best, and depressing at worst. With rotating casts, broken chronologies, and some very weird behind-the-scenes spats, reshoots, reboots, and solo projects, it’s unclear what form DC Heroes would take in HBO World… so we’d hope they’d find a more timeless, comics-rooted version of the characters to embrace.
It’s not impossible to imagine what either would look like in a really-for-real, built-out HBO World… The gritty streets of Gotham City, the art deco skyscrapers of Metropolis, the Technicolor cartoon wonder of a Looney Tunes National Park… Until then, we’ll have to turn to Warner Bros. World in Abu Dhabi as an example of how each can be better used.
Westworld is a perfect match for an HBO World because it’s already a theme park. In fact, Westworld is an adaptation of a movie by Michael Crichton – author of Jurassic Park – and likewise dabbles in the dark side of technology as embodied by a theme park for the ultra-rich. In this case, it’s a hyper-immersive “living” Old West park. In Westworld, 1%-ers can become heroes or villains by befriending, sleeping with, and even killing lifelike android “hosts” who are programmed as characters in the fictional world… all without consequence.
Of course, when the “hosts” begin to develop a consciousness and to resent their torment, they begin to fight back… Both the “Old West” park and the dystopian, industrial backside of Westworld where its “hosts” are repaired and reprogrammed would make for pretty theme-park-able locales… But of course, in this Westworld, neither the guests nor the “hosts” would be quite so expendable.
One of the more compelling Originals to come out of HBO Max has been The Flight Attendant, a sort of noir mystery action comedy starring Kaley Cuoco as a globe-hopping flight attendant who accidentally finds herself caught up in an international murder. Its sleek and stylish settings (from New York City to Bangkok; Los Angeles to Berlin) make it an interesting idea for a theme park adaptation…
But of course, there’s no doubt that the anchor of an HBO World would be none other than Game of Thrones. A generation-defining series, Games of Thrones depicts a fantasy realm of ice and fire; the continents of Westeros and Essos, where centuries of battle over the Iron Throne have resulted in powerful families – the Lannisters, Starks, Baratheons, and Targarygens – whose stories begin to overlap.
The world of Game of Thrones is vast, rivaling Tolkein or Lewis. It’s also incredibly visual, with visceral, “real” places like King’s Landing, Winterfell, Braavos, Old Town, The Wall… In fact, the problem with adapting Games of Thrones to a theme park is probably the same reason no one’s tried to adapt Lord of the Rings yet… it’s simply too big. If anything, an entire park could be dedicated to Game of Thrones, with its fabled locals set around a shared lagoon, Islands of Adventure style…
Of course, all of that also depends on what happens next. After all, Game of Thrones was a global phenomenon… but reviews for its final season in 2019 and its concluding episodes are abysmal, with reviews noting that the show “betrayed” its fans, deeming the final a “failure of imagination” and “a tragedy and an injustice.” After working the public into a flurry for a decade and becoming the must-see HBO show, Game of Thrones kind of flickered out, leaving precious few footprints in pop culture aside from memories of its flubbed ending.
This year will see the debut of a prequel series – House of the Dragon – set two hundred years before the events of Game of Thrones. Will it land? Or did the sour taste left by Game of Thrones’ ending manage to derail interest in the franchise so much that it’s as good as over? We’ll find out… Meanwhile, it’s a whole lot of fun to daydream about a Game of Thrones land… or even theme park.
3. Amazon Prime Resort
It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, Amazon was a pioneering digital retailer with the groundbreaking idea of selling books online and shipping them to customers. Now, the company’s market cap tops $1 trillion (with plenty of accusations of anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior, abysmal labor practices, and tax avoidance). Meanwhile, the company’s founder – Jeff Bezos – holds an estimated $112 billion in net worth… nearly the worth of the entire Walt Disney Company in one man. Unlike Disney or Universal who have built warm-and-fuzzy
Amazon got into the streaming wars with Amazon Prime Video – a service included with the company’s Prime annual membership (which also includes free same-to-two-day shipping, free photo storage, and more). Since reportedly over 200 million people have Amazon Prime (and thus get access to Prime Video), it’s technically the second-largest streaming service after Netflix.
Amazon began producing Original content for its streaming service in 2013, and has had a few breakthrough hits all its own. But in the age of the IP Wars, Amazon needed an influx of content to populate its services. Just as Disney gobbled up fellow “Big Six” studio 20th Century Fox, Amazon made a similar move.
In 2021, the company announced the jaw-dropping news that it intended to purchase legendary, century-old film studio MGM for $8.5 billion (the price Disney paid for Marvel and Star Wars combined). Despite the grand price tag, Amazon’s acquisition comes with some strings. Among film aficianados, MGM is synonymous with the golden age of Hollywood and classic big screen pictures (which is precisely why Disney licensed the name to lend a little cinematic gravitas to their Disney-MGM Studios theme park). But due to legal stipulations, any films produced by MGM prior to 1986 (including age-old classics like The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain plus newer hits like Fame and A Christmas Story) actually don’t belong to Amazon. Instead, they revert to Ted Turner and the WarnerMedia catalogue.
So in addition to its own originals and licensed fare, Amazon will become the owner of post-1986 MGM film franchises like Legally Blonde and Rocky as well as TV series like The Voice, The Real Housewives, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Obviously, none of those quite feel like billion-dollar pop-culture-shapers. But bar none, the most obvious headliner of the MGM purchase for Amazon is clear…
IN THE PARK: The big win for Amazon is the acquisition of James Bond. But even that is complicated, since the 25 main films in the series (with six different actors depicting the character) are co-owned by Eon Productions, whose involvement will need to be a part of anything Amazon hopes to do with the character – and who have expressed disinterest in any direct-to-streaming films. (So far, Amazon has only announced the “007 Race to a Million” reality show based on the character.)
If James Bond was the driving force behind the Amazon purchase as rumored, will it have been worth it? We’ll see… But there’s no doubt that the world of James Bond would make a great land in Amazon Prime Resort…
Released in 2021, The Tomorrow War made headlines as the biggest budget film ever to go direct-to-streaming (with a $200 million price tag).
Originally conceived as a Paramount theatrical release, the film stars Chris Pratt as a soldier who’s recruited by humans from the future to travel to the 2050s and stage a last stand against a species of aliens who have overrun the planet. We’re not sure if the dystopian Miami overrun with alien devastation would make for a particularly pretty theme park land, but it sure would be a captivating one.
Another world you might like to visit – but not necessarily live in – is that of The Boys, an Amazon Original series based on the comic book of the same name. The Boys imagines a world where super-powered individuals (many of whom have clear analogs in the DC and Marvel universes) are bought and paid for by an Amazon-like super-corporation called Vought.
The illustrious group of “The Seven” is Vought’s personal “Justice League,” with its infighting heroes ranging from entitled jerks to genocidal sociopaths whose drug addictions, sex addictions, and even homocides are concealed behind Vought’s marketing machine. While The Boys may be grisly, gruesome, and TV-MA, it would actually be an interesting world to bring to life in a theme park… And certainly, going along for a ride with The Boys as they seek to take down the Seven and Vought’s inner workings would be an interesting thing to be a part of…
The highest profile project to yet emerge from Amazon Prime is the upcoming series Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power. Set to debut this September, the prequel series takes place thousands of years before either The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings and explore the Second Age of Middle Earth. Amazon committed to five seasons with an estimated cost of $1 billion, making it the most expensive television series ever made.
The Lord of the Rings story is owned by the Tolkien Estate and Trust, while the fabled Peter Jackson film series (2001 to 2003) was distributed by New Line. Both organizations are involved in the Amazon series, but Rings of Power is its own thing entirely with its own visual language and interpretation of famous locales. Still, there’s no question that an Amazon Prime Resort would position a Rings of Power land as its anchor… assuming the Tolkien Estate would agree.
4. Hululand
Though it seems a century ago now, remember when there was just Netflix for things on DVD, and Hulu for things that were still broadcasting on television? Hulu launched in 2008 as a joint venture between unlikely partners – including Fox, Disney, NBCUniversal, and eventually Time Warner – providing a streaming home for recently-aired episodes of their respective network shows. In 2019, Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox gave the Mouse House a controlling 60% share of Hulu ownership, and by the year’s end, Comcast and Time Warner had sold their shares to Disney, officially nesting Hulu under the company’s Direct-to-Consumer division.
However, existing licensing deals, new ones, original content, and lots of other factors keep Hulu’s library stocked with shows from multiple studios – not just Disney and ABC. Long story short, Hulu is basically the company’s “not-necessarily-for-families,” “covertly-Disney” streaming service versus the more family-oriented, Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars-focused Disney+. (Interestingly, Hulu is a USA exclusive. In every other country, the “adult-oriented” Disney streamer is STAR – a brand acquired in the Fox purchase. In some countries it’s a standalone service; in others, it’s a channel on Disney+.)
IN THE PARK: So what might await inside a Hululand? Well… Historically, Hulu’s been more of a content aggregator than a generator of new content. What Hulu does create tends to be more drama (The Great, Under the Banner of Heaven, or Dopesick), comedy (PEN15, Normal People, Life & Beth) or pseudo-documentary (Pam & Tommy, The Girl From Plainville, The Dropout) than particularly strong fantasy “worlds” you might want to be a part of… But there are a few compelling shows that might lend themselves to “Living Lands.”
The first Hulu Original that comes to mind is probably Only Murders in the Building – a comedy mystery series set in and around the fictional Arconia Apartments in Manhattan. Starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, the show is vibrant and colorful and hilarious, and a “New York” land centered on it could be an incredible area.
Even though it’s not a Hulu Original, there’s no place better than Hululand to bring to life LOST. The groundbreaking TV series (airing from 2004 to 2010) follows the survivors of an airline crash who find themselves on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific. But what begins as a scripted “Survivor” quickly evolves into something else, as the ensemble discovers not just underground bunkers, abandoned laboratories, employee housing compounds, ancient temples, “Others,” and a mysterious monster who inhabits the island, but that each of them may have been brought to this metaphysical place for a reason…
Leaping forward, backwards, and sideways in time, LOST was a cultural phenomenon… And sure, as with all zeitgeist-defining, shared cultural experiences, sticking the landing wasn’t easy. Some people detest LOST’s much-anticipated finale. But the fact remains that in LOST, writers crafted an absolutely incredible mythology and a gripping world that would be incredible to explore.
While we’re at it, we might as well dedicate a land to ABC’s other J.J. Abrams project that ran concurrently with LOST… Alias was a slick, stylish spy series starring Jennifer Garner (and a series of wigs) as Sydney Bristow – a young woman who discovers that the covert task force she’s been working for isn’t really a black ops division of the CIA, but an international crime organization. Recruited by the real CIA as a double agent, Bristow’s global espionage adventures send her on secret missions that invariably end with cliffhangers (using a novel structure for television, essentially having the next 40-minute “story” start halfway through the episode and conclude halfway through the next).
But like LOST, Alias also has a twist on the genre… Slowly but surely, the steely spy aesthetic begins to collide with something much more ancient: the inventions of a Renaissance artist named Milo Rambaldi, whose prophecies turn into a puzzling mystery of ancient artifacts… The world of Alias is action-packed and larger than life, slowly assembling into a global race against time foretold centuries ago. And boy, would it be fun to step into…
When Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, they became the parent company for the FX channel, acquiring distribution for shows like Rescue Me, Pose, What We Do in the Shadows, The Americans, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The “FX” lineup was added to Hulu with a major component of the marketing push being the streaming of American Horror Story, an award-winning annual anthology show developed by Ryan Murphy (of Glee fame).
Equal parts horror movie, melodrama, and over-the-top camp, the show “reboots” with a new story and setting every year, but uses a repertory cast of actors (lead, at times, by Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Kathy Bates, and Jessica Lange) who take on new roles each time around. American Horror Story’s highs (Murder House, Asylum, and Coven) have been great fun; its middles (Hotel, Roanoke, Apocalypse, Red Tide), middling; its lows (Freak Show, 1984, Cult, and Death Valley), almost unwatchable. But as a landmark series with some intensely memorable settings, it might be interesting to see how AHS could be adapted to a theme park format…
