If you’ve never done a deep dive into the wild world of Motiongate Dubai, a Dubai Parks and Resorts-managed theme park cobbled together from disparate IP clumsily borrowed from multiple studios, you really should. It’swild. Just think of your visit, where you’re able to visit a stage show based on theStep Upfranchise and then hop aboard a Matterhorn Bobsleds-style ride with the appropriately anonymous monikerThe Green Hornet: High Speed Chase. (Yes, based on the failed 2011Seth RogenGreen Hornetmovie.) If these attractions weren’t enough to get you to pony up for the very expensive plane ticket, then this might – there are two new rides coming to the Lionsgate-themed area of the park, based on theNow You See MeandJohn Wickfranchises.
According to a report in Variety, the new rides will be open early next year, perhaps suggesting that the theme park industry in the United Arab Emirates maybe hasn’t been as affected by the coronavirus as they have stateside. That means that, very soon, you can experienceJohn Wick: Open Contract andNow You See Me: High Roller. (Keep in mind that Disneyland still hasn’t reopened and that the pandemic has either canceled or stalled a number of costly projects at Walt Disney World, ahead of what was meant to be its 50thanniversary extravaganza.)
Both attractions appear to feature an off-the-shelf track layout, with theJohn Wickride utilizing the same 4D “free-spin” coaster that S&S – Sansei Technologies designed for Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio (the layout and technology have been used for other attractions too) and Now You See Me appearing to be a classic Wild Mouse coaster. (Notable stateside examples of a wild mouse coaster are Mack Rides’ Coast Rider at Knott’s Berry Farm and Goofy’s Sky School at Disney California Adventure, also by Mack Rides.) But the real theming seems to happen inside the queues for the attraction, which seem to be the best part of the rides in the Lionsgate section of the park anyway (keep in mind thatElizabeth BanksandStanley Tucciappear in pre-show films for theHunger Gamesattractions).
With theJohn Wickride, you’re given the option of helping or hunting the fabled assassin (played, in the film, byKeanu Reeves). ““You’ll get two different experiences depending on which path through the queue you choose to get on the ride,”Jenefer Brown, executive vice president and head of global live, interactive and location-based entertainment at Lionsgate, told Variety. You enter the experience via a scaled-down version of The Continental, the hotel for assassins from the films (it would be neat if it was specifically outfitted like the Dubai version of the hotel, like how we saw the Casablanca variation inJohn Wick 3). According to Brown, fans will “have the opportunity to walk through the lobby of the Continental and experience different key moments in the settings that took place in the films.”
Somewhat less exciting is theNow You See Mecoaster. Brown promises that guess will “have the experience of walking through the casino and taking part in a heist that the Horsemen are in the midst of pulling off.” So there’s that too. (As we all knowNow You See Meis hugely popular internationally, so the choice of IP makes perfect sense.)
Just don’t expect these experiences to be available stateside anytime soon. “I think that there has just been more opportunity to date internationally. But I think that that is changing and we’re certainly exploring possibilities in North America. Hopefully in the not too distant horizon, we’ll be able to bring some of these larger scale experiences here,” Brown told Variety. “In terms of these larger footprint outdoor theme park/ indoor theme park type of experiences, it’s something we’re incredibly interested in and focused on. It’s just really a matter of finding the right opportunity and in mature markets like North America or Europe, those aren’t as frequent as in other parts of the world.”
If you’re recall, there was a Lionsgate themed experience planned for the United States recently, which the Variety report weirdly fails to mention. Lionsgate Entertainment City was a mini-theme park planned for Times Square, which would have similarly featured attractions based onJohn Wickand a clone of aHunger Gamessimulator attraction from Motiongate Dubai, as well as, perhaps most excitingly of all, aMad Menrestaurant. But while the project’s development dragged on without an update in sight, in 2019, more than two years after it was announced, Lionsgate Entertainment City was dramatically dropped. The reason given was that Spanish financial partner Parques Reunidos withdrew from the deal, throwing another project in Madrid into disarray as well. The site for the proposed Lionsgate Entertainment City is, by the looks of it, the current home to a flagship Krispy Kreme site, complete with a “glaze waterfall.” So maybe everything worked out exactly as it should have.
