For at least the last few decades, multimedia companies like Disney, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, and WarnerMedia have been engaged in an all-out war. The goal? Purchasing, licensing, conglomerating, trading, and protecting the most precious resource of the 21st century: intellectual property. In fact, one of Park Lore’s recent Extra Features took a look at 9 surprising IPs that are now officially Disney’s thanks to its acquisition of 20th Century Fox!
But away from the studio, one battlefront in the ongoing IP War has been Disney and Universal’s respective theme parks, where a new era of “Living Lands” has plucked places right from the highest-earning franchises in history like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, and Disney Princesses to go head-to-head in billion-dollar theme park projects.
A few years ago – after so many major acquisitions – we might’ve wondered aloud, “What’s left?!” Then came Nintendo. How had we missed it?! Nintendo was the kind of integenerational, widely-recognized, timeless brand and character catalogue few movies can match. It’s perfect for creating an immersive world. And of course, it doesn’t hurt that between Mario and Donkey Kong alone, Nintendo’s top two franchises have amassed $40 billion in revenue (more than the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe)…
The surprising coup of Nintendo has left lots of theme park fans wondering aloud, “What else have we missed?” and more importantly…
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“What’s Next?”
What could be next? Which blockbuster, A-List IPs are left untapped, unclaimed, or underutilized?As battle lines are drawn and companies consolidate content armies, finding IPs that are “left” isn’t an easy task… We can probably agree that in order for an IP to inspire a complete “living land” in California or Florida, there are a few best practice requirements to keep in mind.
- It has to be an “A-List” story, franchise, or property people widely care about, today, in the United States (which is why the second highest grossing media franchise of all time – Hello Kitty with $84 billion – won’t make this list). In the U.S., for better or worse, how widely people “care about” an IP is typically tied to a property’s box office or revenue;
- It has to pass our “Quality Control” tests around IP in the parks, meaning it should have a good degree of timelessness and intergenerational appeal, “fit” into a park’s existing theme and identity, and should be necessary to tell the story – the part of an IPs long-term appeal and park-appropriateness that box office does not tell;
- It has to translate into the “living land” formula of building a “real,” physical place (whether seen on-screen or “original”, ideally with natural in-universe dining and shopping; hence why something like the $20 billion Peanuts franchise doesn’t quite qualify);
- It has to be either unclaimed by another park or (since this is just good ole fashioned daydreaming) underutilized
At the end of the day, our look at what Disney or Universal’s next big theme park deal could bring is, of course, just for fun, and conveniently ignores the billions of legalities, licensings, and loopholes that would be required to bring some of these properties to life. Consider it a “Blue Sky” exercise in armchair Imagineering! More to the point, imagine how you could see these properties or others like them fitting into Disney and Universal Parks…
1. Pokémon
Revenue: $100 billion (since 1996)
Rights-holders: Nintendo (trademark) / The Pokémon Company (copyright)
Though a ton of excitement has surrounded Universal’s licensing of Nintendo for its theme parks, one IP that’s highly associated with the Japanese gaming company long remained only a rumor: Pokémon. Through both an ongoing 23-season anime and 30-game series, fans have stepped into the ever-expanding Pokémon world where young Trainers venture across cities, forests, grasslands, seas, islands, mountains, and caves in a quest to “catch ’em all.” The goal is to collect, train, and evolve iconic creatures like Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charizard, Eevee, Greninja, Mew, and 887 more. With a growing universe of continents reflecting real-life countries and cultures, new generations adding hundreds of creatures at a time to the Pokédex, and epic mythologies through “Legendary Pokémon” in each generation, it’s easy to see Pokémon as an IP that’s transcended its ’90s origins and has settled into the cultural canon forever.
By the numbers, Pokémon is the biggest media franchise in the world with over $100 billion in revenue since just 1996! (By comparison, Star Wars has earned about $70 billion since 1977.) So why hasn’t Universal made Pokémon a major component of its Super Nintendo World expansions? Simple. Nintendo itself owns only the brand’s trademark, with the copyright held by The Pokémon Company (a joint venture between Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures Inc.).
In a surprise announcement in October 2021, though, Universal Studios Japan (home to the first Super Nintendo World) and The Pokemon Company jointly announced that they’d officially partnered together to bring Pokemon to the Osaka park beginning in 2022. The tight turnaround likely means that Pokémon presence will initially be either small scale or based on overlays to existing attractions (Theme Park University suggested a redux of the park’s Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man was a possibility) but undoubtedly, more permanent projects will follow…
Blue Sky: If Universal does secure the global theme park rights to Pokémon, it’s not difficult to imagine the possibilities. For years rumor has held that Universal would like to use Pokémon as the long-needed replacement for its piecemeal Kidzone (which currently hosts a mish-mash of E.T., Curious George, Woody Woodpecker, and – until recently – Barney the Dinosaur). It’s not difficult to imagine an “immersive” Pokemon city taking shape there. With the right tech behind it, Pokéshops selling Pokéballs could become the land’s interactive draw, with guests catching creatures “Pokémon Go” style throughout the land, then battling against other guests and Gym Leaders.
Though we tend to be (over)protective of Islands of Adventure and its timeless, literary lands, even we can concede that Pokémon might be a great replacement for Toon Lagoon. There, it’s easy to imagine Pokémon powering an Alola-style beach town repurposing Ripsaw Falls as a “Voyage to the Tapu Guardian” and Popeye Island becoming an outdoor Omnimover-style Pokémon Snap ride with guests using devices to capture images of Pokémon animatronics hidden around the island and in the park’s Great Sea.
2. Lord of the Rings
Revenue: $20 billion (since 1937)
Rights-holders: Tolkein Estate (copyright) / Middle-Earth Enterprises (trademarks) / Warner Bros. (films)
The Middle-Earth franchise (made of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit properties) actually has a whole lot in common with Harry Potter. Both are $20 billion+-earning franchises based on books and anchored by early-2000s film series that have been elevated into a sort of pop culture timelessness. It’s hard to imagine either film series ever being “rebooted” or “remade.” They’re simply the definitive big screen retellings, establishing a cast, score, and setting that will forever be the imagery associated with their respective stories.
In other words, like Potter, Lord of the Rings is that rare beast for theme parks: it’s intergenerational, widely known, timeless, and hugely adaptable into a “living land.” Though it’s still unclaimed for use in theme parks, that doesn’t mean rumors haven’t swirled. At times, both Disney and Universal have been said to be vying for the license. As we explored in an epic feature combining the stories of both lands of legend, either Animal Kingdom’s never-built Beastly Kingdom or Universal’s forgotten Lost Continent could’ve benefitted from the IP-boost of The Lord of the Rings.
One unverified story even holds that when notoriously picky filmmaker James Cameron got a little too bossy during the development of Pandora: The World of AVATAR, Disney flew the Tolkein estate and Warner Bros. executies to Animal Kingdom for a private tour. If that happened, it was likely meant to show Cameron that Disney could and would go elsewhere if he didn’t cooperate, and as we know, Pandora moved forward. Still, the fact that one of the most well-known stories in modern history remains in the unpicked “pool” of theme park IPs is shocking! Though there may be a reason…
Our ideas: It’s tough to daydream about Lord of the Rings without being restricted by reality. Yes, the series would fit beautifully in Islands of Adventure’s literary lands… But Lord of the Rings is, above all, a quest, which makes it particularly hard to nail down a single locale worth turning into a living land. Perhaps if the entire Lost Continent had been themed to the series, with mini-hamlets representing the Shire, Lothlorien, and Mordor, it could’ve made sense. But frankly, Lord of the Rings could fill an entire hundred-acre park all on its own, making this a tough IP to work with on a single “ride” or even “land” scale.
The Lord of the Rings film series was renowned for its cutting-edge use of CGI to paint out Tolkein’s high fantasy world. It could very well be that that’s the only way to adequately bring Middle Earth to life. But hey, if Imagineers could make mountains float, why couldn’t they create a glowing Elven city high in the treetops of a glowing, ethereal forest?
3. STAR TREK
Revenue: $10 billion (since 1966)
Owner: ViacomCBS (as CBS Broadcasting, CBS Studios, and Paramount Pictures)
The Star Trek franchise began in 1966 with the debut of the retroactively-named “Star Trek: The Original Series.” Starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as captain and first officer of the USS Enterprise starship, the cult classic sci-fi series followed the ship’s crew on its five-year mission “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Extraordinarily progressive for its time in its social and Civil Rights messaging, Star Trek imagined a Space-Age-inspired future defined not by war, but peace; not by conquest, but by discovery.
Despite being highly recognizable, Star Trek has been largely absent from “big IP” conversations. There’s probably a few reasons for that. One must be that it’s owned by ViacomCBS, who spent much of the 2000s happily licensing Star Trek and their Paramount brand to those “that’s-never-getting-built” theme parks frequently announced then quietly cancelled across Europe and the Middle East. The result is that Star Trek lands have been beautifully concepted, but only one serious Star Trek ride exists, and it’s a Six-Flags-style steel coaster with a Star Trek station and name.
Star Trek has some inherent issues when it comes to creating a “living land,” anyway. Like Star Wars, it would be difficult to anchor Star Trek to a single location given the many series, reboots, and films that make up its 60 year history. Just choosing between an Original Series and The Next Generation land would divide the fandom (as it did for Galaxy’s Edge‘s timeline). There’s also the lingering problem of Star Trek’s relative pacificity. By design, Star Trek deals in science, ideals, ethics, and philosophy, not space explosions, laser swords, or evil villains. It’s hard to imagine a reality where communicators fly off the shelves like Lightsabers, or where guests queue to buy Spandex Starfleet uniforms like Hogwarts House Robes.
2009’s standalone Star Trek film and its ensuing sequels produced and directed by J.J. Abrams gave the franchise a pop culture shot in the arm, but alienated some fans by turning Star Trek into Star Wars – a big, loud, bright action film that Newsweek called “more brawn than brain.” That brand boon has come and gone, and Star Trek is back to appealing to its existing base with ever-expanding spin-offs relegated to Paramount+ (including Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy this year alone).
Our ideas: Frankly, it could be that the best way to “do” Star Trek has already been done. Opened for just a decade – 1998 to 2008 – Las Vegas’ Star Trek: The Experience was a meta-museum that cleverly beamed guests aboard the Enterprise for an in-universe guided Star Trek walkthrough experience with a number of embedded simulator experiences along the way. The 65,000 square foot attraction was totally immersive and self-contained; a cool, niche experience for super-fans and families of tourists alike, and probably captured the spirit of the series more than a theme park land could.
4. The Legend of Zelda
Revenue: $4 billion (since 1986)
Rights-holders: Nintendo
When fans dreamed aloud of what Universal might do with its licensing of Nintendo, four big brands came to mind: Mario (confirmed), Donkey Kong (confirmed), Pokémon (see above), and… Zelda. Over 10 mainline console entries and as many handheld games, The Legend of Zelda has become one of the most iconic video game series in history. Set in the Medieval western European-inspired high fantasy realm of Hyrule, the series has developed a deep mythology and wide geography filled with villages, marketplaces, forests, seas, mountains, ancient relics, and temples.
Link’s vast and beautiful world is one populated by elf-like Hylians, shimmering Light Spirits, the aquatic Zora, mountain-dwelling Gorons, powerful Dragons and Great Fairies, and more. Through multiple incarnations and realities, the games have introduced iconic pop culture images like Majora’s Mask, the Master Sword, the falling Moon over Termina, and of course, the Ocarina of Time.
Our ideas: It seems obvious that the Realm of Hyrule would be a theme park coup. Imagine finding yourself in the village of Hateno or the ivy-covered streets of Hyrule Castle, where guests could dine in pubs or community houses; shop in armories and tailors. Perhaps guests could purchase interactive Ocarinas that, like Wands, could be played to activate glowing runes, cause windmills to spin backwards, or reveal ancient shrines.
From these idyllic villages, adventurers could depart on journeys deep into the land’s Temples, or ride in wagons through the Lost Woods, or fish from crystal streams. Though Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom makes for a compelling and kinetic theme park land, there’s no doubt that Link’s is practically tailor-made for a Universal Park.
In fact, we’d make another rare allowance here: The Legend of Zelda feels like one of the very few intellectual properties that could comfortably take the place of Islands of Adventure’s Lost Legend: The Lost Continent while maintaining that land’s mythological, otherworldly “spirit” in the park’s lineup. Like Pokémon, we’d even concede that somehow, Zelda would feel at home among the timeless, literary IPs the park otherwise focuses on. There’s really only one more video game IP we think could comfortably pull that off…
This kinda makes you think what WB could do with the Six Flags realestate if they wanted their own parks.