When TodayTix acquired Secret Cinema in 2022 for $100 million, it marked a new era for the company, which began life as a ragtag group of film enthusiasts trying to bring movies to life. Originally, the screenings were kept secret (hence the name) and were held in secluded places and the public only discovered what they were seeing when they arrived.

But some public missteps (like a series of last-minute cancellations, including the first few nights of a highly anticipated screening of “Back to the Future” in 2015), followed by the pandemic shutting down the events industry, left Secret Cinema so strapped for cash that it turned to Kickstarter funding. He needed a superhero to save him and that’s how TodayTix, the event ticketing company founded by Brian M. Fenty and Merritt Baer in 2013, emerged.

With Baer now at the helm of Secret Cinema (former CEO Max Alexander and founder Fabien Riggall have long since retired), he is focused on steering the ship into less choppy waters. The first step has been to sign a 10-year lease for a venue (currently under construction) on London’s Greenwich Peninsula, just steps from the O2 arena, where, fittingly, the inaugural show will be “Pirates of the Caribbean” next spring.

While the seas remain stormy in the live events business (“[for] In the theater industry as a whole, costs have skyrocketed post-pandemic,” says Baer), the appetite for the experiential has never been greater, and Baer is focused on turning regular theater-goers into enthusiasts of immersive experiences.

Last year, Secret Cinema tested the waters for its new model with a staging of “Grease” at Evolution in Battersea. Among the changes made from the previous administration is removing the requirement for audiences to participate with pre-assigned stories, instead allowing them to come and go from the action as they please, and also introducing some seated tickets, for those who don’t yet feel brave enough to participate. Baer says “Pirates” will work in a similar way.

Ahead of “Grease”’s return this summer on July 22 (Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson will play Teen Angel), and with preparations for “Pirates” in full swing, Baer sat down with Variety to discuss the current status of Secret Cinema, including international expansion and the company’s upcoming 20th anniversary, plus what audiences can expect when the swashbuckling “Pirates” is released next year.

Why did TodayTix decide to acquire Secret Cinema in 2022?

We’re constantly looking at “How do you redefine the audience experience for theatergoers?” and we really saw Secret Cinema as a creative powerhouse, as a company that was doing really innovative things to bring audiences to the center of a story.

Really the acquisition was about “What’s the connection between theatrical audiences and immersion?” and that’s where, as I run the company, I make a lot of decisions. For example, how do we take theater audiences’ expectations, purchasing patterns, and the way they like to be entertained, and now apply that to immersion? Because there’s this whole world of amazing immersive theater that I think you’d love.

One of the most important changes it has made is renting premises in London for Secret Cinema for 10 years. What was the decision behind renting a permanent location?

Secret has always been a creative powerhouse, but a lot of it, since its inception, as almost any entrepreneur needs to, was by the seat of its pants and figuring things out as it went along, and sometimes that’s an incredibly expensive way to have to do it. [run a company]. Every time you are doing a production, bring millions of toilets or all kinds of equipment that can feasibly be used from production to production. So a big part of the growth was us thinking about how to create more stability for Secret to produce creatively in a more stable way.

Why did you choose London first and do you have plans for another location in the US?

I think London is our home base, it’s where all our team is, it’s where our audience who lived and grew up with us and saw us evolve from screenings in a warehouse 15 years ago.

I can say that we are still actively looking at several international locations, including the United States. It will probably take us a couple more years before we are ready to announce a permanent location in another city, but I can say that we are in very active conversations about multiple pieces of IP, whether it be launching in different cities in the US or installing it in different cities, both in the US and elsewhere internationally.

Doing it well is more important than doing it quickly.

What does the Greenwich Peninsula lease mean for your deal with Evolution in Battersea, where you made “Grease” last year?

This summer we will be bringing back “Grease” for a slightly longer run. The public response was absolutely amazing. It was the best-selling summer run Secret has ever run. I think old Secret fans were a little (I’ll be very honest and forthcoming) disappointed with the choice of intellectual property, but I think what we were trying to do with “Grease” was, again, get back to the thesis. [of introducing theatregoers to immersive entertainment].

Helping those audiences get immersed (in most cases, for the first time) was one of our big goals, and “Grease” seemed like a great piece of intellectual property to achieve that.

One of the elements of Secret Cinema that was off-putting to some potential attendees was being made to participate in an immersive story. Is that something Secret Cinema still does?

No, so the way “Grease” worked and the way “Pirates” will work is that we invited the public to come to Rydell High… the movie started inside and the musical came to life around you while the movie was projected on about 30 different screens, so you could simultaneously watch the movie and the musical come to life. Every time there was a song, the sound from the film would play, the sound from the actors’ microphones would come on, so the number would be performed completely live in this giant almost 50,000 square foot space.

The film and the show would intersect again in the next musical number. That was the format of “Grease,” which we did in close collaboration with both Paramount and the theatrical rights holders.

How will it work for “Pirates” since there are no musical numbers?

[There are] It has no musical numbers, but it does have a very iconic musical score by Hans Zimmer.

We haven’t announced the creative team members yet, but I will tell you that our creative team has some very important heavyweights, in terms of musical direction and orchestration, and we’re going to do some very exciting things to bring that score to life in some magical ways.

“Pirates” was initially scheduled to last 10 weeks, but is there any chance of it being extended?

I guess we’ll see, depending on demand, although so far demand has been off the charts and it’s been the biggest pre-sale in Secret Cinema’s history, so there’s always a chance to see what else is in store.

How involved is Disney in “Pirates”?

Obviously, it’s an incredibly beloved intellectual property that has never had a theatrical treatment before, and so I think the Disney Theatrical Group are, honestly, absolutely fantastic collaborators.

I think from the beginning they were really impressed by what we thought we could do for audiences in a way that felt different and unique from what theatrical production typically is, and yet very much on par with what Disney does in its parks, in terms of completely immersing audiences in an IP.

There will be flights, water and sequences: we will do our best. When people walk into this room, I think they’ll be beside themselves.

Secret Cinema’s 20th anniversary is just around the corner. Do you have anything planned?

“Pirates” takes up most of my time. We have a handful of productions in active development with a lot of major studios that will really help us over the next three, four, five years, so all of those productions are in different stages of development and for various reasons things are paused or accelerated at any given time depending on studio schedules and all that. But we have three or four projects that I’m really excited about in the next few years. Which one intersects with Secret’s 20th anniversary, I still don’t know exactly.

This interview has been edited and condensed.