Universal Studios Hollywood is doing something aggressive this week — and it’s the type of risk that I love to see themed entertainment leaders making.
Characters and franchises have helped drive the Universal and competing Disney theme parks to the top of national attendance lists. People come to these parks in large part to spend time with the characters and visit the places that they love from their favorite Disney, Universal and other licensed studio movies and television shows.
Typically, parks wait to see which new shows and movies will hit with audiences before committing to spend the money to install new theme park attractions based upon them. For designers pitching ideas to their bosses, it’s a lot easier to make a business case for a franchise that has proven it can deliver a fan base through huge box office or high TV ratings.
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But Universal did not wait before committing to bring Jordan Peele’s new movie, “Nope,” to its Hollywood theme park. Universal announced during the build-up to the movie’s premiere that “Nope” would be added as an attraction on the park’s Studio Tour the same day that the film premiered in theaters nationwide — Friday, July 22.
The attraction features sets from the theme park “Jupiter’s Claim” from the new movie, making it Universal’s fourth theme park-themed attraction, by my count. (Jurassic World, Super Silly Fun Land and The Simpsons’ Krustyland are the others, in case you were wondering.)
Theme parks often host promotions for their parent company’s new movies on their premiere dates. But those usually end up being things such as photo ops with characters or preshow units in a daily parade — not attractions designed for the long haul.
It’s been a while since a park opened an attraction on day-and-date with its source material. Walt Disney World opened a stage version of “Beauty and the Beast” on the same date that its original animated film opened in theaters in 1991. And Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle opened with the park in 1955 — four years before Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” hit theaters.
The upside to a concurrent premiere is having a fresh new property to help make the park feel more relevant to today’s entertainment, rather than a mash-up of classic hits from the past. The trouble with opening an attraction at the same time as its source material is that a park loses the advantage of its audience already knowing and loving the theme.
But that’s not always necessary, if the attraction can deliver on its own. After all, Universal Studios Hollywood also provides the industry’s most famous example of an attraction that wowed guests despite its source material, with its long-running and award-winning “Waterworld” stunt show — which opened just three months after the Kevin Costner movie debuted to a collective yawn from fans.
Will “Nope” hit at the box office and in the parks? Time will tell. But I love seeing Universal take a risk in an effort to help its park stand out from and stand above its competition.