Sony Pictures has opened an immersive entertainment destination called Wonderverse at the Oakbrook Centre Mall in the Chicago metropolitan area.
Attractions at Wonderverse, inspired by Sony’s films, TV shows and video games, include a Ghostbusters virtual reality (VR) experience, a Jumanji VR game, Zombieland-themed bumper cars, Bad Boys racing simulators, Uncharted escape rooms with a connected storyline experience — The Heist, The Hunt, and The Return, and a 21 Jump Street pop-up bar.
Jeffrey Godsick leads global location-based entertainment (LBE) and themed entertainment for SONY Pictures Entertainment. His recent projects have included Jumanji attractions and lands at Merlin Parks and the Unchartered attraction at PortAventura World in Spain, while Colombia Pictures Aquaverse in Thailand, a collaboration between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Thailand-based attractions developer Amazon Falls, officially opened in 2022.
Speaking to blooloop about the project, Godsick says:
“What we’re looking to do with the location-based entertainment business is extend and broaden the relationship we have between our audiences and our IP. We need activations that maintain that relationship, bring new audiences into the brand, and extend the stories. In many cases, we’re world-building with these attractions.”
An ideal location
Wonderverse is free to enter, with individual attractions ranging from $6 to $35 per person, a store selling merchandise not available anywhere else, and a range of food and beverage offerings. It opened its doors on January 11th:
“We had a wonderful opening,” says Godsick. “It was our first real test because we had over 600 people in the building all at one time. It went well. People genuinely loved it, and there was a real sense of surprise, which is exactly what we wanted. People got fed, had some great drinks, and got to go on the experiences – and we were lucky because the next day 12 inches of snow came down.”
Wonderverse is located at the Oakbrook Center Mall in the Chicago metropolitan area.
“Oakbrook is one of the top malls in the United States. They get a little over 20 million people a year. Also, many of the location-based experiences there have done extremely well, and are overperforming, so we looked at that. We measured the population around Oakbrook, which is offices during the day that feed events and lunch, then a lot of residential buildings, all within a nice catchment.
“Finally, the space itself is unique, with 31-foot-high ceilings, so we’re inside a structure that allows us to build something spectacular. It afforded a wide berth in terms of what we could think about because there is a lot of space to fill. It gave us both a lot of creative opportunity and the opportunity to think about how we’re going to continue to evolve.”
Sony IP in the LBE space
Sony has a constant stream of new IP being created in the film division, TV division, PlayStation, and music:
“Where a lot of themed attractions and entertainment experiences cannot evolve their offering, we can, because we have so many new things coming to the marketplace. It could be an attraction or a month-long display of costumes. Or it could be a promotion tied to a specific release. It allows us to bring people back and drive repeatability with fresh experience.”
Wonderverse, Godsick explains, raises the bar of location-based immersive experiences:
“We are still in the midst of this explosion in the experiential economy. From watching what people do, we can see they’re interested in taking that themed experience as far as it can be taken.”
In terms of Wonderverse:
“Not only do we have attractions that allow you to go into the worlds of the movies, but we also have several little hidden secrets, including something we call the Ghost Trap bar, which is a hidden speakeasy. If the Ghostbusters had a clubhouse, that would be it, where they would trade stories and display what they had captured. That’s what people feel when they discover it and go in there.”
Easter eggs at Wonderverse
The Ghost Trap bar, which seats 60 people at a time, features paintings and schematic drawings of the proton pack on the walls, shelves of leather-bound books, including Tobin’s Spirit Guide, the supernatural encyclopaedia consulted by the protagonists of the 1984 movie – and ghosts, including the malevolent Slimer, appearing to ricochet round the room.
Godsick comments:
“It’s really fun. We have a lot of nods to things that you’ve seen in the movie, such as the symmetrical book stacking from the first movie, and the haunted card catalogue from the library scene in that movie. Five of the drawers open, and inside is something… I’m not going to say what it is. We have also put different drink cards in there, and you can only order that drink if you find it in the card catalogues.”
An adjoining room can be rented for private events:
“It has a display of five proton packs. If you find the right one, it will actually work. There’s a containment unit that if you were to put a ghost inside and flip the switch, the light would go from red to green. There’s a chandelier made of ghost traps and a lot of little hidden Easter eggs.”
Immersive details
Throughout the destination:
“There is wonder everywhere you turn, certainly in the attractions, but also in the bar, the food, the details.”
For example:
“There are four frames on the wall containing retro-looking ads. If you happen to open those frames, you see real props from each of those movies. There is hidden wonder everywhere.”
In terms of immersion, Godsick comments:
“We really believe in depths of immersion. People need to be able to decide on how deep they want to go. They might just want to be eating in that environment, or they might want to dive deep into the world of a movie and be that character. We’re trying to provide that full range.”
Wonderverse uses VR, augmented reality, interactivity, and storytelling to facilitate this.
“While the attractions themselves are interconnected because they’re all part of the world of the IP that we’ve created, you don’t go necessarily from one story to the other in the same environment. We wanted to offer a lot of different experiences from the physical – like bumper cars or the escape rooms – to virtual reality.”
The Uncharted escape rooms have a connected storyline but can be played as standalone experiences. Concerning the theming, he adds:
“They look like you’re walking into the sets of the movie. The art direction is amazing. The moment the door closes, you are inside that movie, finding clues.
“We want to provide a foundation of storytelling, while also letting the audience fill in some of the gaps. People want to participate, and we have created different environments where they can do that.”
Food and drink at Wonderverse
Regarding keeping the offering fresh, he explains:
“We have a rotating space where we plan to change the IP every four months. We are starting with 21 Jump Street. Because the idea of 21 Jump Street is going back into school, we have created this school set that we are programming, so that a couple of nights a week, it might be where you can go and do wine-sipping and painting, for example.”
“We’ve used the school environment to create other experiences. People can, again, decide at what level they want to participate.”
Wonderverse’s themed food and drink options include – in addition to the hidden speakeasy, The Ghost Trap – a limited-time 21 Jump Street-themed pop-up bar experience, where visitors head back to school for cocktail chemistry or join an art class for a ‘paint and sip’ night, as well as the general Commissary Bar, led by Pernod Ricard’s mixologist Jane Danger and featuring speciality cocktails, mocktails and light bites, and the full-service Commissary Restaurant, led by chef Scott Donaldson and offering a full menu of food, desserts and cocktails.
Catering to different audiences
The venue pivots from its daytime function to a more adult night-time one:
“During the day we’re seeing more family. When you get to school letting out at around four or so, we’re seeing more teens. Then, at nine o’clock, it transitions, becoming a venue for 21 and over.
“You’ll see shifts in the music, shifts in certain things that will be open that will not be open earlier, and a shift in some food and drink items, as well as a slightly different experience, as the night goes on, especially as we bring in a DJ on the weekends. The speaker system is fantastic, and it really fills the space so there’s a digital club environment.”
He adds:
“We chose IP that was very broad in its appeal. Jumanji and Ghostbusters reach everyone. Bad Boys and Zombieland are a little more niche, but their reach is still wide. So, we’ll continue to bring in IP that represents that kind of range.
“We think the combination of attractions makes Wonderverse a unique offering. We’re doing this because we want to give customers an experience that’s deeper than any experience they’ve had before with the IP. In addition, we listen to customers; we encourage and want feedback. We are creating these experiences and want to evolve them based on feedback. We did a lot of research going into this, and we will continue to do so throughout the process.”
VR attractions
Wonderverse features several different VR attractions:
“For Ghostbusters, as an example, there are two separate experiences. One is more of a walk around where you have a proton pack and are capturing and busting ghosts, which is fun. The second is a VR full-motion simulator where you’re flying the Ectomobile in a race.
“We’ve never had a flying Ectomobile in any version of Ghostbusters, from the movies to the TV shows,” he concedes. However: “Again, we’re taking the world of the IP that people know bringing something different. It could be different ghosts; it could be a different story. In this case, you’re flying the Ectomobile.”
The plan is to start bringing in more IP from all areas of the company:
“There’s great interest from Crunchyroll to bring in anime, which we absolutely want to do, because anime is exploding everywhere around the world, and Crunchyroll is growing rapidly,” he explains:
“It’s the same thing with PlayStation Television movies. We have a vast portfolio. Not every single movie or TV show necessarily makes sense, but many do, and even those that don’t have the widest following might work as a popup, allowing us to expand our reach and celebrate our releases.”
The next big release from the movie company is Madame Webb, which will come out around Valentine’s Day:
“We’ll do some big events from Madame Webb at Wonderverse, something we’ll start to do with all of our releases. This is a home for all of the worlds that Sony’s content divisions have created.”
Expanding the Wonderverse model
Touching on the strategy in terms of expansion, he says:
“Wonderverse gives us a great testing platform to talk to the audience directly and see what they love most. Again, we’re very interested in that feedback. The goal is certainly to roll this out as a product around the world. It might have different IP, in the sense that we would bring some of our global IP, but also maybe some of the local IP from that particular territory, so you’ll see similarities and differences as Wonderverses open up around the world.”
Location-based entertainment is becoming an increasingly popular way for audiences to experience and enjoy brands. Godsick comments:
“For us, it’s been a wonderful couple of years. Last year, we opened three attractions: our first Uncharted attraction and two Jumanji attractions. In October, we celebrated the first anniversary of our first waterpark, Columbia Pictures Aquaverse in Thailand, so we are not simply focusing on our indoor entertainment strategy, which is continuing to grow and evolve; we have multiple parallel tracks. We are also starting to explore taking Aquaverse to a couple of other locations. It’s generating great interest because it has been so successful.”
Numerous new ventures, he says, will be rolled out imminently:
“The next few are in the immersive theatre space,” he explains:
“We can’t announce them yet, but one will be opening in London towards the end of the summer, and the others will roll out in the United States.”
