page_title: Warner Bros. Movie World
section_title: Park set-up and opening
hierarchical_section_title: Warner Bros. Movie World / History / Park set-up and opening
caption_attribution_description: The Fountain of Fame on Anzac Day Night 2008 at Warner Bros. Movie World
context_page_description: Warner Bros. Movie World is a theme park on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. Owned and operated by Village Roadshow's Theme Parks division, the park opened on 3 June 1991. It is part of a 154-hectare entertainment precinct, with the adjacent Village Roadshow Studios film studio and nearby Wet'n'Wild Gold Coast water park, among other properties all operated by Village Roadshow.
  The park's theme is based on Warner Bros. and related DC Comics properties. Jointly developed by Pivot Leisure, Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow, the park was designed by C. V. Wood in 1989 to adjoin the existing film studio complex. Movie World is Australia's only film-related theme park, and the oldest of the three Warner Bros. theme parks worldwide. It recorded 1.3 million visitors in 2007 and ranked third in yearly attendance for Australian theme parks.
  The park contains movie-themed rides, attractions and shows. Various costumed characters regularly patrol the park to interact and take photos with guests. Each afternoon, characters participate in a parade along the park's Main Street.
context_section_description: Hollywood interest in Australian film and actors grew rapidly during the 1980s. Italian-American film producer Dino De Laurentiis, aware of industry buzz over the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee and having worked with many Australian actors and directors in recent years, visited the county that year. With De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG), he commissioned and constructed a film studio in Oxenford, near Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, Queensland. The studio was to produce the Arnold Schwarzenegger-led film Total Recall. However, amid financial instability caused in part by a series of box office bombs such as 1987's Million Dollar Mystery, De Laurentiis left the tanking DEG in December 1987, production on Total Recall halted, and $3.4 million worth of studio sets were dismantled. Village Roadshow, who had an established partnership with Warner Bros. in Australia, bought out DEG entirely in 1988, and by July that year the newly-cemented Warner Roadshow Studios (now Village Roadshow Studios) had opened.
  In October 1988, Village Roadshow acquired a large lot of swampy land adjacent the studio complex from investment company Ariadne Australia (who had been crippled by the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash). The following month, Village Roadshow persuaded Warner Bros. to acquire 50% of the studio, and a theme park provisionally named Warner World was announced to be built on the recently-acquired land. Warner Bros. moreso recognised the value proposition in the theme park than in the studio. The two companies had already recently acquired Sea World through a joint-venture with Pivot Leisure. In 1989, Village Roadshow acquired the nearby Wet'n'Wild Gold Coast water park. That year, they commissioned C.V. Wood to design the theme park. He had six park designs in his portfolio at the time, including Six Flags Over Texas and Disneyland. He modelled the layout on similar  parks such as Universal Studios Hollywood and Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park. The park was scaled such that guests could visit all attractions in a single day, even during peak periods, and to support up to 13,000 daily guests. The 16-month park construction relied on labour from local workers as much as possible, and cost an estimated AU$120-140 million. It was the world's first "American-style" theme park built outside the United States since Tokyo Disneyland.
  The opening ceremony held on 2 June 1991 was attended by more than 5,000 people, among them celebrities such as Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. To mark the occasion, Queensland Premier Wayne Goss cut novelty film reel with Eastwood and Bugs Bunny at the opening ceremony. That evening, a special edition episode of Hey Hey It's Saturday ("Hey Hey Goes to the Movies") was shot on-location; host Daryl Somers interviewed many of the celebrities in attendance such as Eastwood and Russell. The park opened to the general public the following day, 3 June. Between 400 and 500 new jobs were created at the park upon its opening. The initial guest admission fee was $29 for adults and $19 for children. With increased  international tourism to the Gold Coast since the 1980s, Village Roadshow had hoped to tap into a market with American and Japanese customers; park attractions were subtitled, and tour guides were trained, in Japanese language.
caption: The Fountain of Fame, Movie World's entrance plaza
exif: {}