China’s ‘Netflix’ iQiyi to open theme park with VR based on its shows

BEIJING — Chinese videostreaming platform iQiyi announced Thursday it plans later this year to open its first full-fledged theme park in China based on characters from its own shows.

The forthcoming “iQiyi Land” is set to open in the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province, just over two hours from Shanghai by high-speed train. The company said the theme park will include seven types of attractions — including immersive theater, interactive film sets and experiences that use virtual reality — largely based on characters from iQiyi’s films and television dramas.

It’s the latest company to bet that local consumers will spend more on experiences, despite tepid retail sales.

Legoland is opening its first China resort in Shanghai this summer, while Warner Bros. Discovery last month announced it is opening a “Harry Potter Studio Tour” in 2027 in the same city. Chinese toy company Pop Mart opened a themed “Pop Land” in Beijing in late 2023, which has become the most popular attraction in the city’s business district, according to rankings from Dianping.

IQiyi’s planned theme park builds on the company’s recent success with VR-specific attractions.

The company has developed technology that combines VR headsets with moving platforms — giving visitors the impression that they are walking, riding on boats or sitting in a flying carriage. That means a theme park-like experience can be compressed into a space as small as a square just 57 feet long.

Since iQiyi’s first dedicated VR experience opened in Shanghai two years ago, the company has worked with business partners to open more than 40 locations in at least 20 Chinese cities. One VR experience based on iQiyi’s “Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty: To the West” gained more than 100,000 visitors in its first year of opening, according to the company.

VR, gaming and artificial intelligence have enabled the emergence of “distributed” theme parks that are more compact, interactive and able to iterate content more quickly, Hang Zhang, senior vice president at iQiyi, said in a Chinese statement translated by CNBC.

He said some of the VR-based experiences will first be released in iQiyi Land before they’re launched in other venues.

IQiyi shares closed nearly 3% higher in U.S. trading Thursday and are up 14% for the year so far.

Mainland China’s theme park revenue is forecast to exceed 480 billion yuan ($67 billion) this year, with more than 500 million visitors, according to data shared by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. That would be up exponentially from 30.39 billion yuan recorded across 86 major theme parks in mainland China in 2023, just after Covid-19 pandemic controls ended, the data showed.

Parks are increasingly using a mix of virtual reality to engage guests, while using AI tools to manage crowds, the association…