When the first ever stage adaptation of the global book and film franchise The Hunger Games opens its doors in London next week, fans paying up to £200 have been promised an “electrifying” and “immersive” experience.
The show at the purpose-built 1,200 seat Troubadour in Canary Wharf, which features Hollywood A-lister John Malkovich appearing via screen as the evil President Snow who oversees the televised spectacle of teenagers fighting to the death, is the latest in an explosion of launches looking to cash in on a boom in consumer demand for experiential entertainment, often linked to bankable franchises.
The boom in the market for experimental, unusual nights out and shows is well established, from escape rooms, axe throwing and slumber parties to Secret Cinema’s Olympic Park takeover to recreate the setting for Back to the Future and the hugely successful Abba Voyage. Recent pop-ups include experiences linked to Minecraft, Jurassic World and Squid Game.
As big money has rolled into the sector, so too has a desire from companies to rely on solid gold intellectual property to bring in the crowds – with mixed results.
“We’ve looked into a lot of immersive experiences,” says Hollywood financier Chip Seelig, who has backed Come Alive!, the London-based theatre experience inspired by the hit 2017 film The Greatest Showman. “While even [prime] intellectual property doesn’t guarantee a success, we find it very hard to attract audiences without recognisable global IP. So we think it is a critical item to success.”
Seelig’s TSG Entertainment co-financed and produced the Hollywood blockbuster. Even before its release he had spied the opportunity to bring it to life in a real-world experience, and struck a rights deal with 20th Century Fox, now owned by Disney.
Disney is also launching its own more traditional theatre-style version of The Greatest Showman in a world premiere at the Bristol Hippodrome in the spring.
While shows such as Come Alive! have proved a success – it recently extended its run at the former home of the BBC Earth Experience for another year – costs involved in real-world productions mean that commercial success is far from certain.
The plight of traditional theatre provides a cautionary tale for the booming immersive entertainment sector.
A recent analysis by the New York Times found that none of the 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season have yet made a profit, and at least three with $20m (£15m) budgets closed less than four months after opening.
And since the end of the pandemic, only three of 46 new musicals – those not based on existing, familiar IP – have become profitable to date.
Another significant issue facing the relatively nascent experiential industry is that a gold rush mentality has resulted in an increasing number of operators launching events that fail to live up to expectations.
Last year, an unofficial event called The Detroit Bridgerton Themed Ball, which charged ticket holders between $150 and $1,000, went viral for all the wrong reasons when attendees were shown sitting on the floor, eating KitKats and watching a solitary pole dancer as the evening’s entertainment.
Similarly, Glasgow’s shoddy Willy Wonka experience, billed as a “celebration of chocolate in all its delightful forms”, made global news when police were called after families who had spent hundreds of pounds on the event that left children in tears became furious, and it was abruptly cancelled.
The most recent production to come in for criticism is Elvis Evolution, which opened in London’s ExCel centre in the summer with tickets priced from £75 to £300. It was initially advertised as a concert experience that would use “AI and feature holographic projections of the star”.
An initial promise of a “lifesized digital Elvis who will perform iconic moments in musical history on a UK stage for the first time” ended up with AI being used to “upscale archive footage”.
Layered Reality, which created the show, said it clarified there would be no hologram by the time tickets went on sale and had been “overwhelmed” by praise from attendees.
One attender said the experience was “absolutely atrocious” and one VIP ticket holder said it was a “shambles from start to finish”.
While some fans enjoyed it – one said she “loved every minute” – reviews have been mixed. The Telegraph gave it one star and even Time Out, which was more positive with a three-star rating, alluded to a “noticeable amount of booing”.
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“The immersive art and entertainment industry is certainly nowhere near a crash,” an analyst at the Gensler Research Institute wrote in its 2025 Immersive Entertainment & Culture Industry report. “But an influx of confusion has undoubtedly begun to rise within markets as low-quality offerings are being pushed out.
“The latest plague to infest the industry has resulted in unrealistic expectations set by an influx of AI-generated imagery and misleading copy on marketing materials.”
Gensler’s report estimates that the global market for immersive entertainment will be worth £98bn this year, and is projected to reach £351bn by 2030.
Little Lion Entertainment (LLE), the company behind the Crystal Maze live experience in London and Manchester based on the cult 1990s TV show, has just signed a 10-year rights extension with the show’s maker, Banijay.
“This isn’t just an expansion, it’s the beginning of a global adventure,” said Tom Lionetti-Maguire, the founder and chief executive of LLE. “We’re reimagining the Crystal Maze experience for the next generation.”
The experience of London-based Secret Cinema, a pioneer that has put on events themed on movies and programmes such as Star Wars, Stranger Things and James Bond, indicates that deep-pocketed media heavyweights believe the future remains bright for the sector.
It emerged in September that Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel, who co-founded the US entertainment group Endeavor and now runs the company behind World Wrestling Entertainment and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, is closing in on a deal to buy its parent company.
Emanuel’s global events company is close to a deal with TodayTix Group, the US-based digital ticketing firm that acquired Secret Group in a $100m deal in 2022.
Merritt Baer, a co-founder of TodayTix, says the firm decided not to launch any productions last year while it “regrouped and had a rethink about what audiences wanted”.
“A lot of people are throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks,” he says. “When they fail an audience, that has a scarring impact, destroying trust in the sector.
“Secret Cinema has a very high-quality brand and heritage and we aim to be at the top end of the spectrum. There are a lot of smart people realising experiential is where the present is meeting the future.”
He adds: “Netflix, Apple, Amazon and others have done a phenomenal job of raising the bar of quality and quantity of content coming into your living room. Live theatrical and event producers need to raise the bar to get them to leave the living room.”
