NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell has confirmed that construction on the new Epic Universe theme park in Orlando is on track for a 2025 opening.
During the UBS Global TMT Conference on Monday (5 December), Shell said: “We’re right on track, literally right on track. We expect to open it in 2025.”
“I was down there a couple of weeks ago and everything’s coming out of the ground,” added Shell. “So all the infrastructure is in, a lot of the steel is in, and now it’s just a question of building [it] out.”
Epic Universe is located near the Orange County Convention Center, which Shell said would be “sort of an interesting experiment for us”.
“Results are going to be interesting to see as the convention business comes back,” he added.
“The park is built so that you can come into one land, and not the whole park, and are we going to get nighttime convention business which is a kind of an interesting experiment for us.”
Epic Universe was originally slated to open in 2023, but work was paused in spring 2020 due to the pandemic. Construction resumed in March 2021.
Epic Universe will be Universal’s largest theme park in the US. It will offer lands and attractions based on DreamWorks and Illumination intellectual property (IP), as well as a Super Nintendo World.
Epic Universe “literally right on track”
Shell previously teased the new park, revealing that it will be “anchored by a lot of our strong IP, including some of the Illumination and DreamWorks content, but especially Nintendo”.
Earlier this year, Universal announced that the first Super Nintendo World in the US will launch in 2023 at Universal Studios Hollywood.
The land’s signature attraction, Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge, is one of the most complex rides ever created within the entertainment industry.
Super Nintendo World first opened at Universal Studios Japan in 2021.
Images: Universal
