Legendary Entertainment‘s first theme park attraction, “Kong x Godzilla” at Lotte World in Seoul, opens July 24, marking the studio’s entry into location-based entertainment after several years of development on the project.
“It was a big priority for me when I joined Legendary nine years ago,” James Ngo, Legendary’s executive VP of franchise management, tells Variety. “These types of deals take a long time to do, and construction also takes a long time as a process, so I immediately started trying to get Legendary into the space.”
“This is the right time in the franchise for us to bring these major experiential projects to the fans so that they can experience it in real life,” Ngo adds. “We’re going into our sixth movie next year; we have a TV show. So the franchise is kind of at its apex right now in terms of all the different media projects.”
The MonsterVerse has generated more than $2.5 billion at the global box office across five feature films, including “Godzilla,” “Kong: Skull Island,” “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” with a sixth installment already in the works. The franchise’s Apple TV series, “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” is now in its second season.
“Godzilla has been around for 70-plus years, Kong as a character has been around for 100 years,” Ngo says. “As far as the fan base goes, we get everybody who knew Godzilla and Kong when they were kids but are now in their 50s, 60s and older. Our new films are starting to appeal to younger kids and teens, so the audience base has grown the most, and it’s the furthest along of all of our franchises.”
Lotte World is undergoing a renovation, and the company committed to making the Legendary IP the centerpiece of that work, according to Ngo.
“Lotte is such an incredible partner in the region, in the territory,” Ngo says. “Lotte World specifically has been around for a very long time. It’s very well known, and it’s beloved in South Korea, but also around Asia regionally. This is going to be Lotte’s biggest investment as a ride in the park. It’s not just a ride, it’s going to be the marquee ride of the park and really the main attraction for everything.”
“From the moment guests come to line up, they are being recruited to join Monarch,” Ngo adds, referring to the fictional organization that tracks the franchise’s giant creatures. “That’s kind of our opening human touchpoint for the guests to be able to step foot into this world.”
Guests then board a HEAV, the Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle featured in the films, before encountering Kong.
“Kong really guides them through Hollow Earth and all the experiences, while also protecting them against all the dangers that they would find in Hollow Earth,” Ngo says. “There are massive screens, a lot of amazing media that we’ve created with our partner. There are physical sets as well for our Titans and animatronics at massive, massive scale. The combination of real-world things with the media that works together in order to enhance the guest experience makes it extremely immersive.”
Ngo describes the ride as one piece of a larger strategy spanning gaming, consumer products and publishing.
“Our gaming reaches our consumers on a digital level on the screen. Consumer products really allow them to bring it home and experience it at home. Our comics and publishing program allow them to expand on their stories and use their imagination to go to places that may not be on screen yet,” Ngo says. “For location-based entertainment, it brings them into the whole world on a physical level and really gets to put them in the middle of that world. The strategy of being able to be where our consumers are really completes that cycle for us.”
The ride’s development also involved Legendary’s film division directly, according to Ngo.
“Legendary is very nimble and tightly connected. The filmmakers really sit one floor down from where my team and I sit, so we run up and down talking to them every step of the way,” Ngo says. “They suggest certain storyline tweaks in order to better tie it into the next film. It’s not just that they see a final product and approve it or not. They work with us every step of the way, and they try to tie so many touchpoints back into the film, back into the comics. This is becoming a very much interconnected world and experience.”
Legendary maintains a dedicated Beijing-based team covering the Asia territory, Ngo says.
“The Asia territory is extremely important to a lot, if not all, of the projects that we work on. A lot of our IP and the type of movies that we make resonate so well within that market,” he says. “MonsterVerse, for example, is massive, massive in Asia.”
Ngo frames the Lotte World ride as a test case for adapting Legendary’s characters to physical spaces.
“It’s being the first to go to market. It will show people how amazing this IP is to be adapted into this format, and that it’s doable,” Ngo says. “The biggest challenge in the past, especially for ‘Pacific Rim’ and MonsterVerse, has been the scale of our characters and the scale of our world. It’s an amazing thing to experience in location-based entertainment, but it’s also very hard to execute. Now that we’ve been able to execute it in this way and it looks incredible, I think people will start to embrace it more in the LBE [location-based entertainment] space.”
South Korea’s broader entertainment profile factored into the decision as well, Ngo says.
“South Korea is just really on the world stage on multiple levels, from manufacturing to entertainment to exporting amazing IP… I don’t think it was new for us,” Ngo says, noting Legendary had already worked with Korean entertainment IP and fashion partners in the past. “I think the opportunity would just allow us to create a stronger foothold in the market.”
Ngo says Legendary has explored location-based concepts for other franchises in its library, including “Dune,” “Pacific Rim,” “Detective Pikachu” and “Enola Holmes.”
“Some may be a large theme park ride or attraction, or even a whole land, and others may be more pop-up and dining experiences, or escape rooms and murder-mystery experiences where it makes sense,” Ngo says. “I think all of them have the IP DNA in order to expand into the space. It’s just depending on timing, where the actual opportunities are in terms of locations and what people are looking for in terms of markets.” Legendary is also set to launch a new franchise, “Street Fighter,” this October.
Asked whether the definition of franchise management has fundamentally shifted as audiences increasingly expect brands across multiple platforms, Ngo says: “I don’t know if the definition of it has changed. Studios like Disney and other larger studios have had these strategies for many decades, so I don’t necessarily think it’s a new concept… We’ve been able to sustain this for over a decade now with the MonsterVerse, and we’re building ‘Dune’ to that level as well.”
Ngo says he views Legendary’s position five years from now as an extension of where the studio already stands today.
On whether he sees Legendary primarily as a film studio or as a broader entertainment company, Ngo says: “I would argue that we’re already there. I think the volume of scaling up and putting out more franchises is probably the goal. We have the infrastructure, we’re already working in all of these different areas and franchises to create amazing experiences for our fans. We’ve always been a very fan-first type of studio. We know what our fans want, we give it to them, and we delight them.”
