Legendary Entertainment’s first theme park attraction, “Kong x Godzilla” at Lotte World in Seoul, opens on July 24, marking the studio’s entry into location-based entertainment after several years of development on the project.

“It was a big priority for me when I joined Legendary nine years ago,” says James Ngo, executive vice president of franchise management at Legendary. Variety. “These types of deals take a long time and construction also takes a long time as a process, so I immediately started trying to get Legendary into space.”

“This is the right time in the franchise to bring these important experiential projects to fans so they can experience it in real life,” adds Ngo. “We’re going to make our sixth movie next year; we have a TV show. So the franchise is at its peak right now in terms of all the different media projects.”

MonsterVerse has generated more than $2.5 billion at the global box office across five feature films, including “Godzilla,” “Kong: Skull Island,” “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” with a sixth installment already in the works. The franchise’s Apple TV series, “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” is now in its second season.

“Godzilla has been around for over 70 years, Kong as a character has been around for 100 years,” Ngo says. “As far as the fan base goes, we have everyone who knew Godzilla and Kong as a kid but is now in their 50s, 60s and older. Our new movies are starting to attract younger kids and teens, so the audience base is the largest and most advanced of all of our franchises.”

Lotte World is undergoing a renovation and the company has committed to making Legendary IP the centerpiece of that work, according to Ngo.

“Lotte is an incredible partner in the region, in the territory,” says Ngo. “Lotte World specifically has been around for a long time. It’s well known and loved in South Korea, but also throughout Asia regionally. This will be Lotte’s biggest investment as an attraction in the park. It’s not just an attraction, it’s going to be the main attraction in the park and really the main attraction of the whole thing.”

“From the moment guests line up, they are being recruited to join Monarch,” Ngo adds, referring to the fictional organization that tracks the franchise’s giant creatures. “That’s our first human touchpoint so guests can set foot in this world.”

Guests then board a HEAV, the hollow earth aerial vehicle featured in the films, before meeting Kong.

“Kong really guides them through the Hollow Earth and all the experiences, while also protecting them against all the dangers that they would encounter in the Hollow Earth,” Ngo says. “There are huge screens, a lot of incredible media that we’ve created with our partner. There are also physical sets for our Titans and animatronics on a huge, massive scale. The combination of real-world things with media that work together to enhance the guest experience makes it extremely immersive.”

Ngo describes the trip as one part of a broader strategy that spans games, consumer products and publishing.

“Our games reach our consumers digitally on the screen. The consumer products really allow them to take them home and experience them at home. Our comics and publishing program allows them to expand their stories and use their imagination to go places that may not be on the screen yet,” Ngo says. “In the case of location-based entertainment, it takes them around the world on a physical level and really puts them in the middle of that world. The strategy of being able to be where our consumers are really completes that cycle for us.”

The development of the attraction also directly involved Legendary’s film division, according to Ngo.

“Legendary is very agile and tightly connected. The filmmakers actually sit one floor down from where my team and I sit, so we’re running up and down talking to them every step of the way,” Ngo says. “They suggest certain adjustments to the story to better tie it into the next movie. It’s not just about them seeing a final product and approving it or not. They work with us every step of the way, and they try to tie in a lot of touch points with the movie, with the comics. This is becoming a very interconnected world and experience.”

Legendary maintains a dedicated team based in Beijing that covers Asia, Ngo says.

“The Asian territory is extremely important for many, if not all, of the projects we work on. Much of our intellectual property and the type of films we make resonate very well in that market,” he says. “MonsterVerse, for example, is huge, huge in Asia.”

Ngo frames the Lotte World attraction as a test case for adapting Legendary’s characters to physical spaces.

“It’s the first to market. It will show people how great it is to adapt this intellectual property to this format and that it is feasible,” says Ngo. “The biggest challenge in the past, especially for ‘Pacific Rim’ and MonsterVerse, has been the scale of our characters and the scale of our world. It’s an incredible thing to experience in location-based entertainment, but it’s also very difficult to execute. Now that we’ve been able to execute it this way and it looks amazing, I think people will start to embrace it more in LBE. [location-based entertainment] space.”

South Korea’s broader entertainment profile also influenced the decision, Ngo says.

“South Korea is really on the world stage on multiple levels, from manufacturing to entertainment to exporting incredible IP… I don’t think it was new to us,” Ngo says, noting that Legendary has worked with Korean fashion and entertainment IP partners in the past. “I think the opportunity would simply allow us to create a stronger position in the market.”

Ngo says Legendary has explored location-based concepts for other franchises in its library, including “Dune,” “Pacific Rim,” “Detective Pikachu” and “Enola Holmes.”

“Some may be a large theme park or attraction, or even an entire land, and others may be more dining and pop-up experiences, or escape rooms and murder-mystery experiences where it makes sense,” Ngo says. “I think they all have the IP DNA to expand in the space. It just depends on the timing, where the real opportunities are in terms of locations and what people are looking for in terms of markets.” Legendary will also launch a new franchise, “Street Fighter,” this October.

When asked if the definition of franchise management has fundamentally changed as audiences increasingly expect brands on multiple platforms, Ngo says, “I don’t know if the definition has changed. Studios like Disney and other larger studios have had these strategies for many decades, so I don’t necessarily think it’s a new concept… We’ve been able to maintain this for over a decade with the MonsterVerse, and we’re building ‘Dune’ to that level as well.”

Ngo says he sees Legendary’s position five years from now as an extension of the studio’s current situation.

On whether he sees Legendary primarily as a movie studio or as a broader entertainment company, Ngo says, “I would say we’re already there. I think the volume of expanding and launching more franchises is probably the goal. We have the infrastructure, we’re already working in all of these different areas and franchises to create amazing experiences for our fans. We’ve always been a fan-first kind of studio. We know what our fans want, we give it to them and we delight them.”