I looked up at the 90-year-old rafters inside Stage 5 on the Warner Bros. lot and wondered what Bette Davis would make of the whole thing.
Please, she might sniff. Or maybe she’d be impressed that her old soundstage — where she filmed the classic “Now, Voyager” in 1942 — had found a way to endure.
Warner Bros. recently opened an attraction inside the stage called Superman Experience: Defenders Unite. For $39, visitors can visit the Fortress of Solitude, where they are “recruited” to save Earth. Working in groups, they discover they have powers (flight, super strength) and compete for points. I bought a ticket one Thursday afternoon and played against tourists from Texas.
It was quite a workout. The main attraction uses video walls, motion-capture effects, video game software and physical sets to create the illusions. There are also less involved games. The Doghouse of Solitude lets you play digital catch with Superman’s dog, Krypto. (I passed.) Themed snacks and beverages are on offer, including a glowing Liquid Kryptonite ($18) made of rum, apple sour liqueur, tonic water and pineapple juice. (Again, not for me.)
You exit through a gift shop, where items like a Superman snow globe ($10) and a Superman logo ring ($300) are for sale.
“We want to grow this business,” Simon Robinson, the president of global experiences and studio operations at Warner Bros., told me, referring to tourist-oriented attractions.
The history of Stage 5 has mirrored the changing fortunes of Hollywood with striking precision. In the 1940s, the 15,000-square-foot soundstage hosted some of the golden age’s most memorable performances — Davis murmuring, “Don’t let’s ask for the moon,” in the final moments of “Now, Voyager,” and Joan Crawford slinging hash in “Mildred Pierce.” The ’50s brought new kinds of films to Stage 5, including westerns and pseudo-westerns like “Rio Bravo,” with John Wayne, and “Giant,” with James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor.
“All the President’s Men,” also shot on Stage 5, embodied Hollywood’s turn toward realism in the ’70s. In the ’80s and ’90s, the hallowed space evolved again, hosting megawatt network sitcoms like “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Friends.”
Now, as an encapsulation of the entertainment business, Stage 5 has become, in the words of a Warner Bros. news release that landed in my inbox, “a walk-through experience and live gameplay attraction.”
So it goes in the Hollywood of 2026.
Film production in Los Angeles has mostly dried up. Movie cameras now overwhelmingly roll in states like Georgia and in countries like Britain, where generous tax incentives lower costs.
TV still relies heavily on studio lots; Warner soundstages, which host productions like “The Pitt,” “Abbott Elementary” and “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” were 90 percent occupied last year. But the TV business has also atrophied amid cost pressures and competition for leisure time from the likes of YouTube, Fortnite and TikTok. Last year, 1,122 shows were made in the United States, a 34 percent decline from 2022, according to Luminate, a research firm.
So why did Warner Bros. build the Superman attraction on Stage 5?
“It just happened to be the one that was vacant,” Mr. Robinson said.
Defenders Unite probably won’t attract many cinephiles. “When will the indignities end,” the Hollywood historian Sam Wasson said dryly when I told him what Stage 5 had been transformed into. (What would Davis say about it? “I had my problems with Jack Warner, sure, but I’ve got a much bigger problem with this,” Mr. Wasson wrote in a text message, referring to one of the studio’s founders.)
Even so, tickets have sold briskly, especially among teenagers and families with young children, Mr. Robinson said. Defenders Unite offers something “more immersive and engaging” than the traditional Warner Bros. Studio Tour, he added. The tour, which the company started in the 1970s to offset financial hardship, costs $79. You can add Defenders Unite for $20.
During my visit, I met Alicia Lopez, 15, and her father, Angel, 41, who had turned up at Defenders Unite while on vacation from Austin, Texas. They laughed together as they joined Superman in a battle to save the planet; they said they particularly enjoyed a game training exercise involving wayward chickens. (I liked that part, too. It was unexpected, and the gesture-driven technology was particularly responsive.)
Afterward, I asked my new friends if they knew anything about Stage 5. They did not. So I rattled off some movies and shows that were made there over the decades, including Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” and part of “Casablanca.”
“That’s so cool,” Alicia said.
