The first Netflix House is not a house. It's a former Lord & Taylor department store at the King of Prussia Mall, outside Philadelphia, Pa. Inside, fans of the world's most popular streaming service can enjoy a mini-golf course, restaurants, a movie theater, and lots and lots of places to take selfies — like on a Bridgerton-style red velvet throne or an afghan-covered couch in a living room from Stranger Things.
"This is the first permanent physical manifestation of Netflix for our fans," says the company's chief marking officer, Marian Lee. "They've been inviting us into their homes for years and years."
Netflix House is focused on immersive experiences, not movie theaters, Lee says. (The number of movie theaters in the U.S. has dropped by more than 20% since Netflix first started streaming content into living rooms in 2007, according to the industry group Cinema United.) The first location includes a spooky multimedia experience called "Eve of the Outcasts" based on the show Wednesday. The second Netflix House, set to open in Dallas, Texas in December, will not even have a screen. It will feature a Squid Game virtual immersive experience, for those who crave the excitement of being gunned down with the help of a giant mechanical doll.
"What they're trying to do is blur the lines between their content, your home experience, your small screen experience, and an interactive, fully immersive, tactile, in-person experience," says Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends for research firm Comscore. Plus, he adds, this is a way for fans to essentially market the shows to each other through social media.
This move into the physical realm follows dozens of pop-up experiments in 350 cities around the world, says Lee. "It's given us so much information about what fans in Korea love versus the fans in Madrid," she says. "It gives us a lot of local information."
Besides invaluable data, Netflix Houses provide something other streaming services have: a connection to a physical space where fans can interact with favorite characters and shows. Disney, with its theme parks, is also the parent company of Hulu. Universal Studios is a corporate sibling of NBC's Peacock.
"I think the key factor will be: do people see this as worth the expense," Dergarabedian adds. "It's free to go in and to explore. But then, they want to upgrade you. They want to upsell you for these multimedia experiences, immersive VR games, mini-golf and the like."
A third location is currently in the works for Las Vegas. "I would love it to be in every major city around the world," Lee says.
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