Las Vegas immersive entertainment hub AREA15 is turning five<\/a> in a big way, celebrating the arrival of its second phase of development on September 17. Zone 2\u2019s main attraction, Universal Horror Unleashed, opened its doors over the summer to attract seasonal tourists, but the rest of the offerings are following suit as the year draws out.<\/p>\n After io9\u2019s invited visit to Universal Horror Unleashed<\/a>, io9 chatted with Mark Stutzman, AREA15\u2019s chief technology officer, about the new way to experience Vegas through futuristic visions of participatory entertainment. And it all really started with rave culture.<\/p>\n \u201cThe original idea was, \u2018Let\u2019s use it for festival grounds.’\u201d Stutzman shared, \u201cWe decided it was too hot, and we put up a warehouse, and we said, \u2018Let\u2019s do festivals in the warehouse.\u2019 And then we said, \u2018Well, shoot, why don\u2019t we kind of start creating this immersive destination?\u2019 And that\u2019s where it all started, and Zone One has just been insanely successful for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Meow Wolf,<\/a> the raconteur of interactive art portals that have sprung up across the country, was only the beginning as Zone One\u2019s first anchor.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone who\u2019s coming to AREA15 is coming [for] immersive experiences, right? Like, that\u2019s their whole goal. And so obviously on the Zone One side, Meow Wolf is our anchor tenant and they\u2019ve done a great job of continuing to drive traffic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Zone One features a buffet of AR and VR games and visual walkthroughs among its neon-powered music, dining, and shopping selections. Stutzman continued, \u201cWe have 80 acres here to develop, and Universal is our anchor tenant in Zone Two out of a five-phase project. The entire district will be immersive experiences\u2014it\u2019ll be sports and entertainment; it\u2019ll be great restaurants and all that good stuff. The thing that we\u2019ve been leading into most recently is these kinds of IP-based immersive experiences because you get kind of the brand recognition\u2014the emotional connection\u2014and then we bring not only the experience of building immersive experiences that are engaging.\u201d<\/p>\n Area15 is carving its own tech-forward frontier that\u2019s more attractive to Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z than big E-ticket-esque major IP hubs. Universal Horror Unleashed, like Meow Wolf, leans into AREA15\u2019s fun parallel dimension to the Strip\u2019s casino nostalgia. Meow Wolf\u2019s premise is that it\u2019s a portal to other realms beyond its sci-fi-tinged grocery storefront; you have to look beyond for ways to break through and discover its genre-mashing labyrinths of cosmic and fantasy adventure.<\/p>\n Similarly, Universal\u2019s desert warehouse of horrors acts like a storage facility of the studio\u2019s lore that, because it was placed on AREA15\u2019s dimensional rift-inspired land, brings the monsters to life in their wheelhouse of terrors. Stutzman elaborated, \u201cWe built a lot of these experiences and we leaned heavily into AR and VR and all this other cool tech but it\u2019s really tech that should be the enabler. What should be most forward are the performances and the experience and the story and the emotional connectivity to the content, which is why we\u2019re leaning more into the IP now. It just really works well and Universal is a testament to that. I mean, [it owns] some of the strongest IP in horror.\u201d<\/p>\n The alternate universe thread is more for those who seek it out with Easter eggs in zone one that speak to it but the retailers within aren\u2019t necessarily going to crossover with each other; it\u2019s just a delightful nugget of lore that brings a sort of otherworldly, futuristic, multi-dimensional edge to the space.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll have similar in Three and Four and Five, but we\u2019ll have other cool stuff that we launched, like The John Wick Experience<\/em>, which is a partnership with Lionsgate, another incredibly strong IP owner. John Wick<\/em> has been insanely successful, kind of beyond our models,\u201d he said of the Continental Las Vegas. You can\u2019t stay there because, well, things get hairy as soon as you try to check in\u2014since you arrive at the same time as John during one of his tiffs against the high table.<\/p>\n \u201cWe love kind of doing over the top and Zone Two is going to be crazy with all the different experiences,\u201d Stutzman said of the ongoing development. It will include an interdimensional creature carousel, a drop ride, and a hollowed-out plane with its own fake universe airline concept. But a big thing for the CTO is that at the heart of the tech there are still artists at work.<\/p>\n \u201cArt has obviously always been a big part of who we are so we really wanted to tie into it and we\u2019ll we\u2019ll actually have art tours. And we don\u2019t want to lean into it in a cheesy way. We want to lean into it in a serious way because it\u2019s quite an impressive collection.\u201d<\/p>\n He also noted that AREA15 seeks to cultivate Las Vegas\u2019 art scene through community art events in addition to festival installations surrounding the outdoor plane areas. \u201cWe\u2019ll have lots of musicians under there just entertaining and then we\u2019re also going to throw raves but it\u2019s really going to be an amazing space.\u201d<\/p>\n Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source gizmodo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Las Vegas immersive entertainment hub AREA15 is turning five in a big way, celebrating the arrival of its second phase of development on September 17. Zone 2\u2019s main attraction, Universal Horror Unleashed, opened its doors over the summer to attract seasonal tourists, but the rest of the offerings are following suit as the year draws […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2018893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[370637,370638,325227,24124,370639,370640],"class_list":["post-2018892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-area15","tag-immersive-entertainment","tag-john-wick","tag-las-vegas","tag-meow-wolf","tag-universal-horror-unleashed"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/How-AREA15-Is-Evolving-Immersive-Entertainment-With-Universal-Horror-Unleashed.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2018892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2018893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2018892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2018892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2018892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Wick](\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/wick-area15.jpg\")
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