Wizarding World Refresher

To catch you up to speed: in 2010, Universal opened The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal's Islands of Adventure, and the theme park industry hasn't been the same since. Universal's "Living Land" model (dictated by J. K. Rowling's protection of her IP) created a "Living Land" plucked from the screen, built to-scale and giving fans the chance to not just ride a Harry Potter ride, but exist in the world of Harry Potter. The screen-accurate recreation of the village of Hogsmeade and the towering Hogwarts castle gave visitors a chance to step where their favorite characters stepped; to shop where they shopped; to eat where they ate. Imagine Disney's horror when guests at Universal's Wizarding World queued hours not for rides, but to get into gift shops. Adhering to Rowling's requirement for only "in-universe" food and drink, house robes, wands, quills and ink, owls, and of course, Butterbeer flew off the shelves.

The very next year, infamous cable giant Comcast made a surprise $14 billion majority acquisition of NBCUniversal. Industry insiders expected that Comcast would quickly spin off Universal's parks into a standalone entity, then sell it to a private equity group or a competing entertainment company. But – reportedly due to the unimaginable success of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Comcast didn't sell the parks at all. Instead, the company publicly doubled down, saying they'd invest wildly in Universal Parks & Resorts... And they did.

Fast forward to 2014, when Hogsmeade's follow up – The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Diagon Alley – opened next door at Universal Studios. Stunningly immersive, Diagon Alley again recreated a fantastic place drawn up by filmmakers to unthinkable ends. Totally habitable and incredibly magical, Diagon Alley is considered by many to be the best "Living Land" in the industry, even topping Disney's retaliatory measures (Cars Land, New Fantasyland, Pandora: The World of Avatar, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, etc). More to the point, it practically printed money. The Wizarding World showed all that Universal Creative was capable of, and made a fortune doing it.

For a moment, Universal seemed poised to recreate that magic with a third park in Orlando, and a third Wizarding World to go with it. 

Epic Universe

Announced in 2019, Universal's Epic Universe will be constructed on a whole new campus south of the existing Universal Orlando Resort. This third theme park – set for a 2025 debut – will be the first new Disney or Universal park in the country since 2001's Disney California Adventure. And fittingly, it'll make use of every trick the industry's learned since... meaning Epic Universe will be entirely made of Wizarding-World-style, immersive, "Living Lands."

Though technically Comcast hasn't pulled back the curtain on what exactly will inhabit Universal's Epic Universe, in their typical "worst-kept-secret" style, everybody knows. Allegedly, Epic Universe will reportedly be made of:

• A central, celestial land serving as the park's "Hub" from which guests will pass through portals into fantastic worlds...

• A copy of Super Nintendo World with both a "Mario" and "Donkey Kong" sub-section, each with their own anchor attraction. (The first half of Super Nintendo World is already open in Japan, and soon to debut in Hollywood.)
• A land based on Universal's Classic Monsters, allowing guests to step into Frankenstein's Village and Dracula's Castle in an ode to Universal's black-and-white, genre-defining horror films of the '30s and '40s. 
• A land carry guests the Kingdom of Berk, from Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragons
• A third Wizarding World... and of course, that's where the questions begin.

Allegedly, from Epic Universe's inception, that third Wizarding World was always set to be a 1920s Paris, drawn straight from the screen in Fantastic Beasts 2. In some ways, it makes sense. Universal is really, really good at recreating streetscapes (that's kind of their thing) and a 1920s Paris sounds like a kind of place we'd like to inhabit, regardless of a Wizarding World connection. Rumors of a Fantastic Beasts-themed attractions set in the world of Newt Scamander were all but confirmed... Until the unexpected happened, and Rowling's new Wizarding World turned out to be a bit of a flop...

We won't bother detailing all the "word on the street" regarding the fate of the alleged Fantastic Beasts land, because frankly, you could spend an hour going into Alicia Stella's archive of will-they-or-won't-they-use-Fantastic-Beasts coverage – including detailed rumors, site plans, permits, and patents regarding possible rides for the third Wizarding World – on Orlando ParkStop.

And ultimately, with permits filed and ground cleared, it seems highly unlikely that the third Wizarding World will be anything but a 1920s Paris... but what if...? On the last page, we'll dig into some of our Blue Sky ideas for what a third Wizarding World could look like if Universal had the opportunity to rethink their next move with Epic Universe...