After years of temporary pop-up events, streaming giant Netflix made its first foray into the theme park space last week, rivalling entertainment giants Disney and Universal Studios.
The company’s Netflix House theme park opened its doors on Wednesday at the King of Prussia mall − one of the largest shopping centres in the US, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -− in a space measuring over 10,000 square metres.
The theme park, which offers free admission, plans to host a wide range of dining and activities, all decorated to resemble some of the platform’s most popular shows and films, including Bridgerton, Stranger Things, Squid Game and K-Pop Demon Hunters.
Netflix chief marketing officer Marian Lee said the company opted against charging for admission because “we wanted that accessibility. We want to be an everyday destination”.
“As we were launching these pop-up experiences, it became clear that we would actually have more flexibility if we had a permanent location,” she said in an interview.
Additional Netflix House locations are set to open after the Pennsylvania attraction, with one in Dallas, Texas scheduled to debut on December 11 and a third on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada by 2027.
“Las Vegas is a very different space. It’s not inside of a shopping centre, but it is on the Strip… and so there, we will programme it a little bit differently,” Lee said.
Although Lee did not confirm the costs to build these theme parks, she said “you can see it’s a huge capital investment for the company to invest in both the space and like all the finishings and the fabrications of everything.”
As of right now, Lee said there no plans to build a Netflix House internationally.
“We’d have to think about it in a different way,” she said.