Warner Bros. Reveals $115 Million Investment In Harry Potter Attraction

Warner Bros. Discovery has revealed that it spent more than $114.9 million (£92.9 million) on its latest attraction themed to the boy wizard Harry Potter.

Called the Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo – The Making of Harry Potter, the 30,000 square meter venue opened in June last year and follows a similar format to its counterpart at Leavesden Studios in the United Kingdom where all eight Potter movies were made along with the three Fantastic Beasts spinoffs.

Although the main series of Potter movies came to a climax in 2011, they are still casting a powerful spell on Warner’s bottom line. More than 18 million people have streamed through the turnstiles of the UK tour since the doors to its two cream-coloured soundstages swung open in 2012. Its success led to the development of the tour in Japan where Potter is wildly-popular.

Before the Tokyo tour had even welcomed its first guest, adult tickets, which cost $45 each, had sold out for the following two months. According to its general manager Torben Jensen, by the end of last year the tour had become the leading inbound tourist destination in Tokyo.

Built on the former site of the Toshimaen amusement park, the tour features some of the most memorable sets from the Potter films as well as interactive displays which lift the lid on the techniques used to bring them to the silver screen.

Theme park design wizards Thinkwell Group handled everything from concept development and master planning right down to in-field art direction, installation supervision and training. Thanks to its involvement with projects such as Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, comfortably the most immersive theme park outside Disney and Universal, Thinkwell has built a reputation for its astounding attention to detail. The Potter tour in Tokyo is no exception.

All of the exhibits are either original or built from the original blueprints to give guests the same breathtaking experience that the actors had on the sets.

The tour sets off inside a soaring stone replica of the Great Hall in Hogwarts Castle where Harry and his chums tuck into feasts in the films. It is identical to it right down to the design of the crockery sitting on the gnarled banqueting tables. All that’s missing is the candles floating above which were digitally added to the films in post-production.

Instead, spotlights hang from the rafters on the tour as they do on the actual set making the experience seem even more authentic.

Guests then get to peer inside Harry’s dormitory in Hogwarts Castle and walk the corridors of the Hogwarts Express steam train. There’s even a full-size recreation of the Dickensian Diagon Alley with models of towering colorful characters embedded in the wonky buildings. Just like on an actual movie set, instructions are scrawled on the reverse of the façades showing how they fit together.

All of these sets can also be found in the tour’s UK counterpart but the most spellbinding ones are unique to Tokyo. They kick off straight after the Great Hall and there’s a great sense of reveal. As guests round a corner they are suddenly met with a full-size recreation of the famous Hogwarts’ staircase which magically moves on screen when students climb its steps to get to the right doorway.

The version on the tour in Tokyo is static so it looks more like a scene from an M.C. Escher drawing. The area is also home to an equally magical feature which fans have been crying out for since it first appeared on the silver screen in 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. In an iconic scene, characters in oil paintings beside the stairway begin talking to each other and a photo opp on the Tokyo tour allows guests to appear in one of them. It isn’t the only interactive attraction on the tour.

There are no rides on the tour but some of the exhibits are almost as exhilarating. One digitally inserts guests onto the back of a broomstick and another makes it seem like they are in the crowd at a Quidditch match. First they decide whether to root for the heroic Gryffindor team or support their evil rivals Slytherin. Then a director tells them to duck, gossip, cheer or boo as they would if they were actually sitting in the bleachers. After that the cameras start rolling and the footage is edited into a sequence from the Potter films.

Visitors get to watch it on a big screen and even get to take the footage away as a digital souvenir thanks to the tour’s partnership with Nasdaq-listed specialist theme park photography provider Pomvom. That’s not all.

As anyone who has seen the Potter movies will know, wizards are governed by the Ministry of Magic and are teleported there in what is known as the floo network. They arrive in fireplaces engulfed in harmless green flames and in Tokyo, visitors can mimic this magical effect by posing for photos surrounded by smoke and strobe lighting. Although the journey to the Ministry of Magic is artificial, the spectacle is anything but.

Covering more than 900 square meters, the Ministry of Magic set was one of the biggest and most intricate ever created for the Potter film franchise and it has been rebuilt in Tokyo. The soaring set looks like one of London’s historic underground metro stations as the walls are covered with thousands of green and red tiles made from lacquered wood. It has a Victorian air as oil lamps sit on desks in circular offices set inside tiled turrets on the upper floors. At ground level, the walls are lined with golden fleurs-de-lis flanking the fireplaces where visitors arrive in the films.

Another interactive exhibit enables visitors to design their own digital mask like those worn by the villainous Death Eaters. Anyone who fancies their chances against them can train in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. Just like in the movies, it is set in a stone-walled room with stained glass windows and a sweeping stone staircase. An iron chandelier hangs above and ancient artefacts, like a skull in a glass dome sit on a wooden desk. As a teacher tells visitors to call out spells the lights flicker, the skull sways, lightning flashes from behind the window and smoke sees off a Death Eater who appears on the staircase.

Throughout the tour, the original movie props are within touching distance including costumes, wigs and, of course, wands. Rows and rows of them. Every item is meticulously tagged with details of the film it was used in, the character it was used by and even the fictional materials it is meant to be made of.

Perhaps the only aspect of the UK tour which isn’t as enchanting as the rest of it is the dining on the way. There’s no problem with the food or drink, which of course includes Potter’s favorite tipple of Butterbeer, a non-alcoholic beverage flavored like cream soda and butterscotch. However, the setting seems jarring as the dining area is designed like a studio backlot cafe which, ironically, fits the theme too well.

After being immersed in immensely detailed sets for hours, the backlot cafe seems spartan in comparison. Tokyo has taken this to heart as its dining area is themed to the frilly and flowery home of Hogwarts teacher Professor Umbridge. It serves afternoon tea in a pink and leathery central circular seating area surrounded by saucers on the walls which seem to show moving cats just as they do on the silver screen. Sparing no expense, Warner hired specialist restaurant developers Lumsden which worked with MinaLima, the graphic design firm behind the iconic art in the Potter movies.

It all comes at quite a cost. The Tokyo tour is run by Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden which also operates its UK counterpart. The company’s latest filings are for the year to December 31, 2022 and show that Warner spent $66.3 million (£53.6 million) on the construction of the Tokyo tour during that time bringing the total to $114.9 million. It opened just over five months later so the spending didn’t stop there and there may be more to come.

Many of the sets on the UK tour were bolted on after it opened to cater for its surging popularity. In Japan they were planned in from the beginning so accessibility and guest flow have been optimised. What’s more, expansion spaces have already been allocated which will minimise disruption when they are developed.

Getting the attraction to opening day took much more than money and the wave of a magic wand. As Jensen points out, construction and training for the tour took place during the pandemic.

The Japanese-speaking Dane was educated at INSEAD and has a Diploma in Business administration from Copenhagen Business School. He has been working with Japanese corporations for more than 20 years and in late 1990s was Denmark’s Trade Commissioner for Sapporo which involved him consulting with Danish companies to improve their results in the Japanese market. It worked as he increased the revenue of the Trade Commission by a staggering 250%.

Jensen went on to become project director of Merlin Entertainments’ $300 million LEGOLAND Japan which opened in 2017. He didn’t just run the operation but also managed the negotiations with the City of Nagoya to complete of the Master Development Agreement and the Land Lease Agreement. He even co-ordinated negotiations to complete the loan facility agreement between the main investor and a major Japanese bank.

It paid off as LEGOLAND Japan made an operating profit from its first year leading to a $100 million investment plan featuring a 252 room LEGOLAND Hotel and a SEALIFE attraction. Jensen also oversaw a sponsor program delivering $37.5 million of revenue over five years and helped to boost annual pass membership base to more than 100,000. It gave the resort firm financial foundations and put Jensen on Warner’s radar. That really is a magic touch.