Inside The 50 Year Evolution Of The Warner Bros. Studio Tour

While the spotlight might be focused on Warner Bros. Studios. celebrating its 100th anniversary, that’s not the only landmark event for the Burbank institution this year. 2023 also marks the 50th anniversary of the iconic Warner Bros. Studio Tour, which started in 1973, the same year that The Exorcist and Enter the Dragon landed in theaters.

Things have changed considerably over the last five decades.

“When the tour started, it was based in a small building that was occupied by our garden department,” explained Danny Kahn, the Tour Department Director. He has been at the helm for nearly half of its existence. “It was a garage that was converted to bring guests in and could only handle about 50 people per day.”

“When I came on board, we were in a building that was 500 square feet, and we had 21 parking spaces, which wasn’t nearly enough. There was no real ticketing system, so we would book guests using a spiral notebook, taking names over the phone, jotting them down, and quickly calculating how many people were coming so we didn’t overbook. I would run the register in the front, and we had a handful of tour guides also answering phones and performing tasks as they were doing tours.”

When he took the reins over two decades ago, Kahn had a clear vision of where he wanted to take the tourist attraction that already had global awareness.

“To be honest, a big part of our improvements has been structuring how we were handling guests and working as a team. That was the first thing I needed to do,” he explained. “The vision was to enhance the guest experience, to work closely with production and get as much access as we could to productions, and then also to really contextualize the tour, so being able to play clips on the screens on the carts was a big one.”

“It has evolved so much over time, but also, so much of what has made the tour special all the years has stayed the same. That time you have with a tour guide, someone knowledgeable and genuine about the experience and who gives an unscripted tour of the lot, really hasn’t changed in 50 years. What has changed is our infrastructure and the way that we think about the guest experience. What I didn’t realize was how big we would grow.”

The Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood, to use its full title following a rebrand in 2015, moved into its current base, the lavish multimillion-dollar Welcome Center, in 2021. They now have parking for almost 1,000 vehicles. According to Kahn, the massive investment ahead of the tour’s 50th anniversary illustrates the company’s confidence in the tour.

“The tour has consistently performed. It isn’t something you can substitute or pirate, there’s nothing like being there, and people love that,” he said. “As we’ve developed, we’ve seen more of this exponential growth, which has led to investment in our exhibits in those spaces that continue to help grow the tour.”

Kahn and his team have remained focused on ensuring the tours are accessible, with ticketing options ranging from $70 for the standard one to the deluxe option for $300. The success and popularity of the experience at the Los Angeles studio have inspired growth and investment worldwide.

“The confidence originally established with the studio tour, without having any meaningful investment at the time, was the reason why we built the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London: The Making of Harry Potter. We set that up after we acquired the studio in Leavesden for strategic filming purposes where, for a decade, we produced the Harry Potter film series,” Kahn explained.

“When we acquired that studio, our CEO at the time, Barry Meyer, saw how well the tour was doing in Hollywood and wanted to do a similar guest experience in London. I think the success from that studio tour gave our leadership team confidence to invest here in Hollywood again.”

“We’re continuing to grow and expand and develop, we have a Harry Potter tour that we’ve just opened in Tokyo, and that’ll continue to build on our worldwide studio tour brand.”

Recognized as one of the Top 25 Attractions in the United States, the Warner Bros. Studio Tour has received numerous awards, including a Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice Best of the Best Award in 2022.

“We see people from all over the world that visit Warner Brothers Studio Tour because of the properties that connect with people, especially during Covid,” the VP confirmed. “We’ve had fans come from France that tell us they’ve learned English by watching episodes of Friends over and over again. Before the pandemic, 43 percent of our business was from international territories. Now it’s just a bit above 30 percent, so it’s slowly returning to where we were pre-pandemic. We’d like it to be sooner because international customers are worth two and a half to three times more than domestic visitors, but it’s a slower market to recover.”

“A cloud with the silver lining coming out of the pandemic was that, out of necessity, locals had to look in their own backyard for attractions and things to do when travel was still restricted, so we’ve had a great reception from the local Southern California market, and we’ve seen a lot of growth in that area as well. When locals visit the tour, it catches some of them off guard. They weren’t expecting to have the experience that they get, and they’re pleasantly surprised.”

As well as being a working TV and film studio, since its launch in 1973, the tour has starred in many productions such as Blazing Saddles, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Gossip Girl, and Entourage. Most recently, the Welcome Center doubled for Waystar Studios in Succession.

“It’s incredible how they masked that to cover the front, but it’s so rewarding to see the building being used by production now,” Kahn enthused. “It’s been used repeatedly, and having the tour featured like that is just so rewarding.”

Does that mean the hit HBO show could feature as a permanent exhibit alongside Friends and The Big Bang Theory at the end of the tour?

“Anything’s possible. The exhibitions are something where we keep our finger on the pulse for what people want to see,” he added. “We do a lot of asking and data-driven decisions, so who knows.” Earlier this year, the tour debuted a new Game of Thrones exhibit featuring iconic costumes from the show.

Millions of visitors have taken the Warner Bros. Studio Tour over the last five decades, and many of the guides have gone on to work in the industry, sometimes in the same soundstages and production offices they have highlighted as part of the experience.

“A lot of our rank and file start as tour guides and make their way up into production and the studio system,” Kahn confirmed. “We have people in studio operations, marketing, production, post-production, and beyond who started as tour guides, moved on, and made their way through the company. It’s a great place to start.”