[NE Coffee Chat]Millennial Works: "We Dream of Becoming the 'Disney of Korea' with an AI Theme Park"

Expanding IP Universes with AI Technology
Inviting Fandoms to Participate, Not Just Observe

"In 2028, we will build an artificial intelligence (AI) theme park in Los Angeles (LA), United States."

The goal of Song Yusang, CEO of Millennial Works, is clear. His plan is to first target Asian markets such as Korea, Japan, and Singapore, and then launch the company’s own AI-based theme park in LA, home to Disneyland, the world’s first theme park. He said, "A theme park does not necessarily have to be centered on rides and attractions," adding, "Our vision is to offer experiences where visitors put on virtual reality (VR) devices inside a massive studio-type space that delivers a sense of realism and immersion, like the Sphere in Las Vegas, and engage in virtual battles or set off on adventures as protagonists from cartoons."

Song Yusang, CEO of Millennial Works. Millennial Works

Millennial Works, founded in 2021, initially built its business model around creating virtual characters that assist show hosts in live commerce. Song concluded that the company’s growth would be limited with this business alone. What caught his eye instead was "fandom." The fandom market has been rolling out merchandise and pop-ups that leverage a wide range of intellectual property (IP) such as games, webtoons, idols, and sports, all aimed at these fans. Song said, "Existing experiential pop-ups are essentially 'exhibition-type content' with limited immersion and interactivity," and added, "We aimed for a model where the fandom does not stop at consuming the IP’s universe, but becomes 'participants in the universe' itself."

As the first step toward realizing an AI theme park, Song developed a photo-booth-style "AI Booth." After building a pop-up that reflects a specific IP universe, the company designed the space so that visitors move through and experience multiple AI Booths installed there in succession. A representative example is the pop-up for SM Entertainment’s virtual artist "Nævis." Fans of Nævis became virtual members through the AI Booth and received a debut track and CD album. In effect, they were able to experience the narrative of a virtual debut.

On the 21st, visitors at the Overwatch experiential pop-up set up by Millennial Works and Blizzard Entertainment at Hyundai Department Store Pangyo are browsing various experience zones and merchandise. Millennial Works

At the pop-up for the webtoon "Solo Leveling," the company offered the fandom the opportunity to create an "AI Hunter Card" engraved with a hunter rank, a core element of the universe. Fans kept paying until they received a high rank in order to become powerful figures within that universe. As a result, revenue from the experience expanded to a level comparable to merchandise sales, which are the core of pop-ups, and overall sales grew significantly. It was this performance that caught the attention of global game company Blizzard Entertainment. Starting in Korea, Millennial Works plans to collaborate with Blizzard to build digital theme parks.

Millennial Works’ proprietary technology, the "AI Cubic Model," lies at the heart of its experiential pop-ups and theme park development. Operating on a cloud basis, this model is built as a cube-shaped "3x3x3 modular" structure organized around three axes: technology, business, and market. From the 16 core modules derived from this model, the company selects and applies those suited to the client’s IP characteristics to create an optimal experiential space. Song said, "Through the cloud, we can build and operate different IP experience spaces simultaneously in up to 30 countries," and added, "This realization of economies of scale is what investors are paying attention to."