Inside Netflix House Philadelphia, the Streamer’s First Entertainment Destination Opening This Week

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Inside Netflix House Philadelphia, the Streamer’s First Entertainment Destination Opening This Week

When “KPop Demon Hunters” blew up over the summer, Netflix was nearly finished with the Philadelphia location of Netflix House — the first of its permanent entertainment and shopping venues.

“We weren’t loaded in, but every element had been planned, and there’s complexity there,” Netflix chief marketing officer Marian Lee told Variety Monday in an interview inside of the Tudum Theater (where Netflix IP will be regularly screened) at Netflix House at the King of Prussia mall in Philadelphia.

Kat Kendon

But a hit as big as “KPop” couldn’t be left out of a flagship 100,000-square-foot destination, set to open Wednesday, Nov. 12, so Lee’s team got to work quickly on modifying all the parts of the venue that could be overhauled. Some things were easier than others, thanks to the modular nature of Netflix House, which is intended to turn over its experiences fairly regularly in line with new Netflix releases.

“On the outside of the building, the mural, that has to go before the township to get approval,” Lee says, noting the addition of Derpy — the fan-favorite blue tiger from “KPop Demon Hunters” — to the large-scale illustration outside the entrance to Netflix House, done by local Philadelphia artist Emily White. “So adding elements to something like that is much more complicated. I probably tortured the team to say, ‘OK, well, when we open, what are we going to have from ‘KPop Demon Hunters?’, knowing that there was very little we could do. From July, this has all been in.”

Netflix House Philadelphia / Photo Credit: Kat Kendon

Kat Kendon/NETFLIX

In addition to getting last-minute approval to make changes to the mural, Netflix House installed “a massive fiberglass Derpy that people can take pictures on,” as well as devoting a considerable portion of the interior design to “KPop” callouts.

“There’s elements in the atrium, a lenticular of Huntrix and elements like that, that I think are incredible photo opportunities,” Lee said. “The merch, the popcorn, the menu items” at Netflix House’s restaurant, Netflix Bites, and “all things that we could impact quickly, we did.”

What couldn’t be changed was the pre-planned ticketed offerings — the parts of Netflix House that will cost house-warmers money to enter — like the “One Piece” and “Wednesday” themed-interactive experiences ($39 apiece), the virtual reality rooms ($25), and the Top 9 mini golf course ($15).

Kat Kendon

“An experience, we are working on that, creative development might take a while, but we don’t want to sort of slap dash something together,” Lee said. “We want it to be thoughtful. And I think these types of immersive experiences take time to creatively develop and then produce and so I’m excited for that. But we were able to get a lot of things in so that if you’re a kid and learning about Netflix through ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ we want you to come in and not look around and be like, ‘Where’s the ‘KPop’ stuff?’”

Lee is hinting at the enviable goal of something that took a brand like Disney 100 years to gain: a fandom surrounding not just the individual intellectual property it owns, but the company itself.

Kat Kendon

However, that doesn’t mean Netflix is looking to compete with Disney (or others) in the theme park space — at least not in the next decade. The company currently is focused on rolling out more Netflix Houses, with the second set to debut in Dallas next month, featuring “Stranger Things” and “Squid Game” experiences, followed by one in Las Vegas in 2027, which Lee says will house a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” experience tied to Netflix’s expanding world of Roald Dahl IP.

“I think for us, I am really focused on making sure that this location, and the one that we’re opening next month in Dallas are hyper-successful,” Lee said. “We’re working on Las Vegas right now, which will open in ’27, and I’m excited for that because it’s a different audience that’s coming through there. It’s a little bit of a different space. So I’m interested to see how that plays. And I think in success, we would love to have this type of Netflix House in every major city. So that kind of takes me through many, many years — 10-plus years’ of focus — and so that’s what we’re really focused on. The expansion of Netflix House and continuing to deliver more in-real-life experiences that we think our fans really want.”

Netflix House Philadelphia / Photo Credit: Kat Kendon

Kat Kendon

See below for more from Variety‘s interview with Lee inside Netflix House.

Netflix House Dallas opens next month, and was announced at the same time as Philadelphia was a couple years ago. Las Vegas will open in 2027. Is that so that you can take learnings from what you see at Dallas and Philadelphia and use those to make adjustments to Vegas, if needed, rather than open sooner with the same plans in 2026?

I would love to say that it was that way. But a lot of the timing is based on where, opportunistically, there’s a location that pops up. You need massive square footage. You need 100,000 square feet with massive ceiling clearance, and you can’t get that everywhere. So the narrowness of the locations available to us, it is a little bit of a scouting them and them popping up opportunistically. Dallas and Philadelphia will largely feel similar, like they will have different things inside, but in terms of, a box that was maybe an old department store or something like that, will feel more similar than Las Vegas, which is on the Strip. It’s still massive. It’s more vertically oriented. We have different elements there, tons of foot traffic on the Strip, and so what we put right off the street will look very different. And so if you go to Vegas, you’ll walk in and know you’re at Netflix House — but it’s not going to be, you walk in and you’re like, “Oh, I could be in Philly, or I could be in Dallas.”

Netflix House Philadelphia / Photo Credit: Kat Kendon

Kat Kendon/NETFLIX

There’s a big emphasis on the Philadelphia-location aspect of this Netflix House, with a huge table devoted to Philly-specific Netflix merch. Will all the houses be like that and what is the reasoning behind such a tie to the location when the overall idea is to experience Netflix IP in each of these venues?

It ties back to the fact that, at Netflix, we always say, “We are local for local.” And I think that is an incredible principle to have, whether it’s about the development of content that happens all around the world. Whether our content executives are developing something in France for the French audience or in Korea for the Korean audience — and sure, we have global titles that travel everywhere, but “Squid Game” was developed for a Korean audience, and it just happened to gain that popularity.

So local for local is something that we really think about here where we’ve making a huge capital investment in a local town or city. We employed 260 people locally through the construction phase, we will have over 300 employees locally that will be employees of Netflix and staff Netflix House. And that is important, just for community building — why we’re here, the investments that we’re making. But also, to your point, down to the merchandise. People want to see their town, themselves reflected back. And I think us acknowledging that and continuing to expand on the merchandise assortment, I think that will blow [people] out of the water, because you can’t get it anywhere else. That’s not new, other retailers do the same thing, and you might see something and be like, “Oh my God, that’s so cute. I can only get it at Netflix House.” But the fact that you’re getting something that was designed specifically for people from the Philadelphia area is really exciting. We’ll have the same thing when we open in Dallas, et cetera. And so I love that that’s a very cute nod to where we’re located, and the acknowledgement that we appreciate our fans here — but it is important for us when we come into a city, that it is about being a part of the local community. And so it’s about our fans, it’s about the local community, and all of that comes together, and then you can buy local merchandise.

Netflix House Philadelphia / Photo Credit: Kat Kendon

Kat Kendon

Will the Dallas location of Netflix House have additional “KPop Demon Hunters” tie-ins, as it had a little more time to prep than Philly before opening?

Dallas actually didn’t really have a lot of time, because it’s just like a month away. But Vegas for sure. And we have a lot of fun things already planned for Vegas — a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” experience. And so I’m excited for Vegas. I think there’s going to be so many different elements that we will pull in. And for certain, we will pull in more “KPop” stuff, because we have time. And we are thinking about what we learn from these two locations that are opening and what’s proving to be super popular, that we can either expand for Vegas or change things.

In Netflix House Philadelphia, there are two immersive experiences: “Wednesday: Eve of the Outcasts” and “One Piece: Quest for the Devil Fruit.” While the “Wednesday” one is more of an open-world experience, with carnival games and a larger mystery to solve, if you choose, the “One Piece” experience is a narrative-driven series of escape rooms with a main goal. Is this the format — one open world and one story-specific-mission style — you plan to follow in the other locations, or could you have two similar styles going at one time?

It just turned out that way, but “Squid Game” is more physical game play, and it’s great for groups. But there isn’t an intention for one thing is an escape-room-type thing. It’s more about the IP itself, and where we think the fans will love something. And “Stranger Things” in Dallas is about solving a mystery; a little bit like “One Piece,” but totally different. So it just depends. “Squid Game” is fun for all ages to play games, and it’s more physical than the others.

Netflix House Philadelphia / Photo Credit: Kat Kendon

Kat Kendon

How often do you plan on changing out the larger experiences? How substantially different would my experience be each time if I came back once a month?

We designed it so that we want you to come back over and over again, because maybe the immersive experiences will be the same, but my expectation is not for you to come and you’re going to do “One Piece” and then go straight into “Wednesday.” You might come back a month later. You might come back two months later. You might just do mini golf or eat a pizza and have a drink. So we want you to come back. I think our expectation is that they’d rotate inside of a year, but I’m not sure yet, because, and I think this is important, we’re going to listen to our fans. And are they coming back to do it over and over again? Maybe not. If they’re not, why not? Do we need to swap it sooner? Does it need to rotate in and out in a different time period than we had originally thought of.

I think the beauty of working at a place like Netflix and having a space like this is it is really modular, and there is a lot of flexibility for us to move things in and out, and for us to change our minds. And we’re not so heavily– we’re committed, but it’s not like perhaps at a theme park where it’s like, “Nope, this is the way it’s going to be, and it’s never going to flex.” And we have the ability and the freedom to have that flexibility to change things and to really listen to what the fans are saying. So there might be something that comes out that we didn’t even anticipate — another show or film, that it’s like, “Oh, amazing. Well, we know how to do that, because we just had to rush and do that for ‘KPop.’”

How long do each of the feature experiences take and how did you determine the value for the price, $39 per experience?

So really, it’s about an hour [each]. You could spend longer. Or you could choose to only do the games in “Wednesday” and not work through the mystery portion of it. We have run 40 unique types of experiences in 350 cities. So we have enough data that tells us that 60-to-75-minute mark is the right amount of time. And we’ve looked at pricing across every day part, every city, and so we have that information. Now, forecasts are forecast for a reason, so we can come in and maybe on a Tuesday afternoon, it’s light, so we need to change pricing, and we can look at things that way. We won’t know till we open on that stuff, but we’ve made, I think, some pretty strong assumptions based on the information that we’ve had running all of those experiences in different cities and capacity. And it was a conscious point to make the entire Netflix House free and open to the public, so you could walk in and explore and you don’t have to pay for anything, but there’s price points across every budget. So if you want to do the mini golf, or you want to do the VR which is a shorter time commitment, or if you want to come back to do the bigger, immersive experiences, then that’s something else. And we’ll push dynamic pricing, group pricing, all of that. It’s sophisticated, but I would say that we’ve had 10-million-plus fans walk through our touring experiences, so we have a lot of floor-and-ceiling data.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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