Boardwalk Times: Stories from the Seashore — What If WarnerMedia & NBCUniversal Merged (Theme Park Edition)
Originally published on May 30, 2021.
Welcome back to Boardwalk Times: Stories from the Seashore! In this month’s newsletter, we will be diving into a major what-if that involves Disney’s main theme park rival. This month we also cover Memorial Day weekend box office and why that’s giving us hope plus we got a ton of good links for “Links of the Month.”
What if WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal merged? (Theme Park Edition)
The intellectual property arms race between Universal and Disney has defined theme park competition for years now, and it will even influence the future. Whether it’s Universal creating an immersive land around Harry Potter, Disney building a land around Avatar or Star Wars, or Universal striking a licensing deal with Nintendo. The intellectual property arms race is crucial to the competitive balance between Disney and Universal.
So, how could Universal bolster its own intellectual property? Well, that would be through a merger with WarnerMedia. Remember this won’t actually happen due to the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger. But we can imagine the major what if…? Just a few months ago many Wall Street analysts came out in support of a WarnerMedia-NBCUniversal merger. Even Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners cited theme parks as one of the major reasons to execute the merger:
“Theme Parks: Unites the owner of DC Comics and Harry Potter IP with Universal’s theme parks, rather than the licensing agreements currently in place, with an enlarged film and television studio library to leverage into theme park attractions.”
WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal merging would be complicated but today’s piece will only look at the theme park relevancy from the proposed merger. So, we won’t be getting into streaming service, film and television distribution, or the power structure of the combined company.
Just the theme parks. Also, for the sake of this piece let’s just say that this proposed merged company of WarnerMedia-NBCUniversal figures out a way to get all the Warner Bros. centric IP back from other theme park operators, or they find a way to make their parks co-exist with the other parks utilizing the IP.
The biggest thing the merger would do would make Universal Parks & Resorts a more legitimate intellectual property threat. They would no longer have to make licensing deals (although they still could).
Universal Parks & Resorts would gain full control of the Harry Potter franchise for its parks. So, they would continue expanding the Wizarding World especially now that it is their own property.
Uni would also get the rights to Game of Thrones which has been cited as a desirable intellectual property for a theme park. Boardwalk Times columnist Austin Vaughn even suggested Westeros for Universal’s Epic Universe.
Another incredible IP that Universal Parks & Resorts would acquire would be DC Comics! This one I think is the most exciting one as it could effectively replace the pre-2008 Marvel attractions at Universal Parks. DC Comics would give Universal Creative a treasure trove of angles. A real-life Metropolis? A Batman attraction that takes you on a late-night mission through Gotham? Themyscira from Wonder Woman? There are so many characters they could utilize too.
Warner Bros. and to a greater extent WarnerMedia is behind IP like Blade Runner, MonsterVerse (Godzilla, King Kong, and others), The Matrix, the Hanna-Barbera universe (Scooby-Doo, Flintstones, and others), The Sopranos, Lord of the Rings, Space Jam, Dune, Willy Wonka, Looney Tunes, Dr. Seuss (WB is creating future films), The Wizard of Oz, Beetlejuice, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr. Version), The Conjuring universe, It, Cartoon Network, and so much more.
WarnerMedia coming into the Universal Parks & Resorts fold would give them a distinct advantage as they would acquire IP that has appeal to adults and also properties that could be timeless and forever relevant.
Just imagine the marriage of IP between Universal and WarnerMedia and then you throw in the fact Universal has Nintendo too. This ultimate what-if move would’ve made Universal Parks & Resorts the leader in the theme park intellectual property arms race. Let’s consider all that Nintendo has to offer too. Mario and friends, Animal Crossing, Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda, and more.
If the merger happened the new influx of IP would give Universal Parks & Resorts time to reassess their licensing deals such as Nickelodeon (ViacomCBS), Men in Black (Sony), The Simpsons (Disney), Popeye (Hearst Communications), Marvel Comics (Disney), and Transformers (Hasbro). Although this what-if deal would hurt Disney exponentially there could be a good shot that the deal would actually give Disney some of their IP back for theme parks like Marvel and The Simpsons. The priority for Disney should be getting the first one back for Walt Disney World. From Universal’s standpoint if any of the licensing deals seem not to be worth it. They would have a treasure trove of IP at their disposal to create new attractions and lands.
Just to reiterate the combined company would have intellectual property like Jurassic Park, Fast and the Furious, Back to the Future, DreamWorks (Shrek and others), Illumination (Despicable Me and others), Dr. Seuss, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, DC Comics, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, Universal Classic Monsters, Warner’s MonsterVerse, The Wizard of Oz, Nintendo, and so much more.
WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal merging won’t happen but from a theme park standpoint, it is a fascinating what-if. Still from the properties, I listed above I could see Universal playing some serious offense to acquire more and more properties in this theme park intellectual property arms race.
Just like the streaming wars, the theme park intellectual property arms race is just starting.
Memorial Day Weekend Box Office/Kicking Off The Summer Season
The box office is back!
This Memorial Day weekend we witnessed the box office slowly come back to life. Disney’s Cruella is projected to make $27.3 million over its opening weekend. A Quiet Place II is projected to make $57.4 million over its opening weekend. A Quiet Place II was expected to make $60 million over its opening weekend in the pre-pandemic world so this proves that we are back.
It will be exciting to see how the box office progresses this summer. Yes, some of these films will have safety nets like day and date or in Disney’s case a Premier Access but from the results of Cruella, it seems that Disney+ Premier Access didn’t affect its opening weekend too bad. It will be fascinating to see how Disney+ Premier Access affects Black Widow’s box office or will it at all?
Here’s to the summer at the box office which will include In the Heights, F9, Black Widow, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Jungle Cruise, The Suicide Squad, and more.
LINKS OF THE MONTH
— Considering this month’s newsletter was heavily themed around intellectual property. It only makes sense to share this article from Park Lore which covers perfect untapped intellectual property for theme parks. I even mentioned some above. (Park Lore)
— The change in power dynamics at the Mouse House. Seems like the restructuring has its highs and its lows. (Variety)
— Around the Boardwalk Times Podcast Network! You want The Bad Batch. We have it. An awesome interview with themed entertainment designers Rob Yeo and Andy Sinclair-Harris? We have that too.
— My analysis of Disney Q2 results: Musings on Disney+ and the Disney Parks’ future. (Boardwalk Times)
— Some TV writers are worried over how Marvel Studios creates their streaming series. (Variety)
— Friend of the website Skyler Shuler wrote a fantastic piece for his website The DisInsider detailing all of Disney’s upcoming live-action adaptions and remakes. He includes some super interesting tidbits too. (The DisInsider)
— Disney adds two new board members. (Boardwalk Times)
— The One Where They Almost Went To Disney World: The Story Behind The Scrapped Friends Episode At Walt Disney World (Entertainment Weekly)
Well, thanks for reading the newsletter. We are excited for summer here at the Boardwalk Times!
See you next month for a new edition of Boardwalk Times: Stories from the Seashore!