Hunger Games Amusement Park Coming to Atlanta, I Guess?
Lionsgate Entertainment Corp. has confirmed it: AVATRON Park will bring “to the great state of Georgia and American audiences everywhere” theme park attractions based upon a dystopian future in which children are forced to kill each other for an annual television special.
Exciting!
“We are pushing the thresholds of location-based entertainment storytelling like never before, thanks, in part, to our unique combination of experienced creative leadership and technology integration expertise. We look forward to sharing this gamechanging experience with future guests.”
“The Hunger Games” books and movies certainly present a visually arresting setting that would seem to work well as an immersive park area, a la Universal Studios’ Harry Potter expansions. There is, however, the issue of the Hunger Games themselves. How do you work around that?
Avatron Smart Park hopes to open by 2019. Avatron’s chairman is David C. Garrett III, an experienced developer and a former Georgia Lottery executive. Designs for rides are in the early stages, but Mr. Ram said he had no qualms about the harsher “Hunger Games” story lines. “There are so many positives about these movies, starting with the fact that she’s an empowered young woman,” Mr. Ram said.
For sure, there’s plenty of positive stuff in the stories. Hunger Games-themed park areas could be cool, so long as you avoid, you know, the actual Hunger Games.
Immerse your children in the thrill of killing other children for sport. [Screenshot via YouTube]
Theme parks are often challenged to craft rides based upon popular movies while creatively avoiding those stories’ darker sections—the Little Mermaid-themed dark ride at Magic Kingdom skips over Ursula’s demise altogether, for example. This is no Little Mermaid! It will be fascinating to see how an amusement park can construct rides and attractions around “The Hunger Games” series when the central, defining, titular story element is so, so dark.
