Warner Bros. reveals $115 million investment in Harry Potter attraction

Warner Bros. Discovery has revealed it has spent more than $114.9m (£92.9m) on its latest Harry Potter-themed attraction.

The 30,000 square meter venue, called ‘Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo – The Making of Harry Potter’, opened in June last year and follows a similar format to Britain’s Leavesden Studios, where all eight Potter films were made.three fantastic beasts Spin-off.

The main series of Potter movies reached its climax in 2011, but it still continues to cast a powerful spell on Warner’s bottom line. More than 18 million people have passed through the turnstiles of his UK tour since the doors to his two cream-colored soundstages opened in 2012. Its success led to the development of a tour in Japan, where Potter is hugely popular.

Adult tickets, priced at $45 each, were sold out for the next two months before the Tokyo tour welcomed its first guests. By the end of last year, the tour had become Tokyo’s top destination for inbound tourists, said general manager Torben Jensen.

Built on the site of the Toshimaen Amusement Park, this tour features interactive exhibits that reveal some of the Potter films’ most memorable sets and the technology used to bring the films to the silver screen.

Theme park design masters Thinkwell Group were responsible for everything from concept development and master planning to on-site art direction, facilities supervision and training. Thanks to his involvement in projects such as Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, the most immersive theme park outside of Disney and Universal, Thinkwell has built a reputation for incredible attention to detail. Potter tours in Tokyo are no exception.

All exhibits are original or built from original blueprints, giving guests the same breathtaking experience that the actors had on set.

The tour begins inside a towering stone replica of Hogwarts Castle’s Great Hall, where Harry and his friends feast in the movies. It’s the same, right down to the design of the crockery on the gnarled banquet table. The only thing missing is the floating candle on top, which was added digitally to the film in post-production.

Instead, the tour has spotlights hanging from the rafters just like the real set, making the experience seem even more authentic.

Guests can then take a peek inside Harry’s dormitory at Hogwarts Castle and walk the corridors of the Hogwarts Express steam locomotive. There’s also a full-scale recreation of Dickens’s Diagon Alley, with colorful character models embedded within the whimsical buildings. Just like a real movie set, there are instructions scrawled on the back of the facade showing how they fit together.

All of these sets can also be seen on the UK tour, but the most captivating set is unique to Tokyo. They kick off right after the Great Hall and have a nice sense of reveal. As guests turn the corner, they suddenly see a life-size recreation of the famous Hogwarts staircase. As students climb the stairs to reach the correct doorway, it magically moves on the screen.

The Tokyo version of the tour is so static that it looks like a scene from an MC Escher painting. The area also has an equally magical location that fans have been waiting for since it first appeared on the silver screen in 2001. harry potter and the philosopher’s stone. In the iconic scene, the characters in the oil paintings next to the stairs start talking to each other, and guests can also appear in one of them during the Tokyo tour photo shoot. This isn’t the only interactive attraction on this tour.

There are no rides on the tour, but some of the exhibits are just as exhilarating. One digitally puts the guest on the back of a broom, and the other makes it look like he’s in the crowd at a Quidditch match. First they decide whether to root for the heroic Gryffindor team or their evil rivals Slytherin. The director then instructs them to squawk, gossip, cheer, and boo just as they would if they were actually sitting in the audience. The cameras then start rolling and the footage is edited into a Potter movie sequence.

Through a tour partnership with PontVom, a Nasdaq-listed theme park photography company, visitors will be able to watch the show on a big screen and take home the footage as a digital souvenir. That’s not all.

As anyone who has seen the Potter movies knows, wizards are controlled by the Ministry of Magic and are teleported into it, known as the floo network. They arrive inside a fireplace engulfed in harmless green flames. In Tokyo, visitors can imitate this magical effect by taking photos surrounded by smoke and strobe lighting. Although the trip to the Ministry of Magic is contrived, the sights are something else entirely.

Covering over 900 square meters, the Ministry of Magic set is one of the largest and most complex ever built for the Potter series, and has been rebuilt in Tokyo. The towering set looks like one of London’s historic Underground stations, as the walls are covered in thousands of green and red tiles made of lacquered wood. A circular office set in a tiled tower on the upper floor has an oil lamp on a desk, giving it a Victorian feel. The ground floor walls are lined with golden fleurs de lis on either side of the fireplace where visitors arrive in the film.

Another interactive exhibit allows visitors to design their own digital masks, similar to those worn by the villainous Death Eaters. Anyone who wants to fight them can train in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Just like in the movie, it’s set in a stone-walled room with stained glass windows and a sweeping stone staircase. An iron chandelier hangs above, and a wooden desk is topped with ancient artifacts, including a skull in a glass dome. As the teacher instructs the visitors to cast a spell, lights flash, skulls shake, lightning flashes from behind the windows, and smoke sends off Death Eaters as they appear on the stairs.

During the tour, original props from the film will be within touching distance, including costumes, wigs, and, of course, canes. There are many rows of them. Every item is carefully tagged with details of the movie it was used in, the characters used, and even the fictional material it is supposed to be made from.

Perhaps the only aspect of a UK tour that isn’t as appealing as the rest is the food you eat along the way. No problems with food or drinks. Of course, that includes Potter’s favorite Butterbeer, a non-alcoholic drink with flavors like cream soda and butterscotch. However, while this setting seems off-putting as the dining area is designed to look like a studio backlot cafe, it ironically fits the theme all too well.

After spending hours immersed in the highly detailed set, the backlot cafe looks spartan by comparison. Tokyo has this in mind, with the dining area themed after Hogwarts teacher Professor Umbridge’s frilly and flowery house. Afternoon tea is served in the pink and leathery central circular seating area. Surrounded by saucers on the wall, it appears to depict a moving cat just like on the silver screen. Warner spared no expense, hiring specialist restaurant development firm Lumsden and working with MinaLima, the graphic design firm behind the iconic art for the Potter films.

Everything costs a lot of money. The Tokyo tour is run by Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, which also operates similar tours in the UK. The company’s latest filings cover the year to 31 December 2022, during which time Warner spent $66.3m (£53.6m) on construction for the Tokyo tour, bringing the total to $114.9m. It is shown that it has been done. Opening just five months later, the spending doesn’t stop there and is likely to increase further.

Many of the UK tour’s sets were bolted on after the show opened, in response to growing popularity. Japan was planned from the beginning, optimizing accessibility and guest flow. Additionally, the expansion space is already allocated, minimizing confusion during development.

It took more than money and a flick of a magic wand to get the attraction completed by opening day. As Jensen points out, construction and training for the tour took place during the pandemic.

The Japanese-speaking Dane was educated at INSEAD and holds a degree in Business Management from Copenhagen Business School. He has been working with Japanese companies for over 20 years and served as Danish Trade Commissioner in Sapporo in the late 1990s, consulting with Danish companies to improve their performance in the Japanese market. It worked, and he increased the Board of Trade’s income by an astounding 250%.

Jensen became project director for Merlin Entertainments’ $300 million Legoland Japan, which opened in 2017. In addition to running the operations, he also managed negotiations with the City of Nagoya to complete the master development agreement and land lease agreement. . He even coordinated negotiations to complete a loan facility agreement between a major investor and a major Japanese bank.

As a result, Legoland Japan achieved operating profits in its first year, leading to a $100 million investment plan featuring a 252-room Legoland hotel and Sea Life attraction. Mr. Jensen also oversaw his sponsorship program, which brought him $37.5 million in revenue over five years, and helped him increase annual pass membership to more than 100,000. This gave the resort company a financial footing and brought Jensen to Warner’s attention. It’s truly a magical touch.