Warner Bros. Discovery’s substantial parks business is its future owner’s shot at becoming the next Disney.
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The Trump administration’s sudden interest in antitrust notwithstanding, Netflix’s pending $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is poised to be the biggest Hollywood story in a generation. The deal would place the revered century-old studio, along with its deep library and bounty of IP assets, into the hands of the streaming giant that has radically reshaped the industry since barging in with its DVD-by-mail biz in the late ’90s. Given the scale of Warner Bros.’ business, it will take quite some time for the merger to shake out, and meanwhile the rest of Hollywood will white-knuckle its way through a sizable list of unanswered questions. One of the many we’re curious about: Will the acquisition give Netflix a genuine foothold in the amusement-park business?
Big Red has been dabbling in the “experiential” lane of late, most prominently with show-specific pop-ups like the Squid Game experience in New York and a handful of so-called Netflix Houses, relatively small and contained yet permanent live-experience hubs featuring attractions themed around popular Netflix shows like Wednesday. At present, there are two Netflix Houses in operation: one in Philadelphia’s King of Prussia Mall and another at Texas’s Galleria Dallas, with a Las Vegas location on the way in 2027. But much like Netflix’s confusing adventures in video games, those efforts seem mostly tentative and experimental — marketing events that double as toe dips into a theoretical line of revenue as opposed to a real commitment to what could be a lucrative unit that stands separate from Netflix’s core streaming business.
Ingesting Warner Bros. changes Netflix’s options on this front, though only partially. In addition to its valuable library of titles and intellectual property (including DC Studios and Harry Potter), the storied studio does operate some live experiences, such as its studio tours in Burbank, London, and Tokyo, plus a handful of flagship retail stores around the world. But its actual theme-park business, the area with a real upside for Netflix, remains somewhat limited. Crucially, unlike Disney or Comcast, Warner Bros. does not currently possess a substantial footprint of parks it actually owns.
Instead, Warner Bros.’ parks strategy has long relied on licensing its deep bench of properties to outside operators. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, for example, which has locations in Hollywood, Orlando, Osaka, and Beijing, is a joint venture with studio rival Universal. Its most significant partnership is with Six Flags, dating back to its ’90s Time Warner era, and while three parks outside the U.S. technically carry the Warner Bros. name — Warner Bros. Movie World in Australia, Parque Warner Madrid, and Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi — they’re all operated by external partners. (Curiously, ahead of this week’s Netflix deal, WBD still appeared to be making moves on this front; Bloomberg reported Thursday that it was “exploring the possibility of additional operators.”) In other words, its parks operations are primarily tied up in relationships and licenses, and Netflix will indeed be taking over those amusement-park licenses alongside the smattering of Warner Bros.’ studio tours and retail stores if the deal closes. “Both are Warner Bros. businesses, so yes,” a WBD spokesperson confirmed to Vulture.
Obviously, the big question is what Netflix will do with those licenses, and the broader ramifications of what they choose to do should not be underestimated. It’s too early to know if Netflix-era Warner Bros. will cease its dealings with any of its licensing partners, though if it decides to rework them, this puts Six Flags in particular in a vulnerable position. Compared with strongholds like Disney and Universal, the amusement-park corporation has faced closures and layoffs and relied on investors such as Travis Kelce to stay afloat. What would Six Flags look like without its most valuable properties like Looney Tunes and, especially, its DC Comics characters Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman? Six Flags Fiesta Texas would be nothing without its Superman Kryptonite Coaster.
Alternatively, working with Six Flags could be the toe in the water Netflix needs to manage a pivot from themed mall experiences to actual theme parks. There’s no way Comcast would give up Harry Potter in its parks — the Ministry of Magic, of all things, is the marquee world in Universal’s Epic Universe — but after a failed bid to buy Warner Bros., would it be so keen to work with Netflix to put titles like Stranger Things into its parks?
Then again, Universal has been looking to open small-scale theme-park experiences in states like Texas, not completely dissimilar to the Netflix Houses. (Fans are guessing Wicked will be the to-be-announced land in Universal’s Epic Universe, but c’mon, we all know Barbie World would work so much better. Do you want to visit a fascist Oz or hang with a bunch of Kens watching The Godfather in Mojo Dojo Casa House?) It seems likely Six Flags would be more malleable, but Warner Bros. and Netflix certainly have more options if they decide to plunge deeper into the world of themed entertainment.
Ultimately, Netflix’s decisions around these licenses carry considerable ramifications for the company. If it uses them as an opportunity to meaningfully break into the amusement-park business, we’re looking at a fundamental change in the identity of the brand that spent the past decade-plus remaking Hollywood in its image. Netflix wouldn’t be just a streaming giant any more. It would be a true 21st-century entertainment conglomerate operating at the scale of Disney.
