IR at WXO Summit: Immersive Everywhere’s Neil Connolly on creating IP-based experiences

This article is part of Immersive Rumours' coverage of WXO's London Experience Week 2025.

Neil Connolly is the Creative Director of Immersive Everywhere, who are best known for adapting pre-existing IP such as Doctor Who and Peaky Blinders into live experiences. Neil has previously worked on creating immersive experiences based on The Crystal Maze, Tomb Raider and Peppa Pig, and has also produced work for the likes of Harrods, Sainsbury’s and Warner Bros. Later this year, under Neil's direction, Immersive Everywhere will launch The Traitors: Live Experience in Covent Garden, which is based on the hit BBC series. 

At WXO's Summit 2025, Neil Connolly was part of a panel discussing adapting IP into live experiences, alongside Andrew McGuinness from Layered Reality (Elvis Evolution), Olivier Goulet from Supply and Demand (Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue), and Ryan Amstad from Pophouse (ABBA Voyage). 

Following that panel, we spoke with Neil to find out how he approaches turning pre-existing IP into live experiences, and try to get an answer to one of the burning questions surrounding The Traitors: Live Experience… what happens to players who are banished or murdered?

Photo: Hugo Glendinning

IR: Hi Neil. Thanks for speaking with us today. You’ve made a career out of adapting already existing IP like The Crystal Maze and Tomb Raider into playable experiences. Later this year, you're launching The Traitors: Live Experience. What is the first step in that process? Do you start work once you've already secured an IP, or are you already working on it long before you've acquired the rights?

Neil: Great question. I will caveat this answer by saying there is a huge team of us, I'm just one person in the organisation, and I do not pretend to take credit for all of those things... I'm a creative director and a commercially minded creative. I design my creative in line with the operations of the show. Sometimes I have pitched and landed those deals. Sometimes things are brought to me, and I develop them out. To answer your question very directly, it always starts with ‘What is the coolest thing that people want to do or could do in that particular experience?’

I design my shows, and I always approach my creative with ‘I am a ticket buyer, and I have paid money to be at this experience. So, what is the coolest thing that I could be doing for the money that I have spent?’ I'm always designing with that in mind. From that, I then extrapolate and think, ‘How do we design a story and a narrative?’ and build from there. When I've designed most of that, I then go, ‘How do I onboard people into that narrative and into that design?’

Photo: Hugo Glendinning

IR: Creating a show based on a pre-existing IP means that you'll have stakeholders with a vested interest in protecting that IP, and it's a very different experience from creating original work. How do you juggle trying to keep the experience really great for visitors, but also satisfying for all of the IP stakeholders? 

Neil: IP holders are often deeply invested in their properties but may not always have a clear vision for how that translates into live experiences, so they’re always looking to us to come in with lots of ideas. What I've often done is create original stories using their world and in their world. So the question is, how do those original stories then operate within their world without ever affecting the timelines or the brand too much?

You can't make a show in an IP brand and then, at the end of your live experience, kill off the main character because that's insane. It would massively affect all of the truncated things that go on with whatever else is happening in the brand, so you can't do those things. You often have to work in those gaps and in those myriads.

There are often times where things we've done have then become linear within their wider, larger brand, which is super fun and super fun to capture, and it's really nice as a creative because you get to just be a part of the world and play in that world.

It's just being super respectful to that, but also having the courage to go at it yourself and say, ‘No, I'm going to do this original storyline’ and ‘These are how these characters are going to develop and play out’. It's all about the public. The public perception, especially when you're doing IP, they're being fed through television or cinema or computer games, and they already exist. You have to respect and have the courage to play in that world.

I think when people don't have the courage to play in that world and respect it too much, that's when live experiences become a bit weaker because people want to play. The public, the people who are spending the money coming to these things, want to play in that world.

Photo: Hugo Glendinning

IR: If there are creators who are currently making original, non-IP work but are looking to explore the idea of taking on an IP or a brand deal, do you have any wisdom for transitioning from original work into the IP-based world? What do people need to consider?

Neil: It's a deeply personal question, not just for me, but for anybody who is doing it, because there are creatives who want to build their own thing, and I absolutely respect that. I have a lot of friends who do that. I just happened to have gone down the road where I develop IP into other things, and I'm really happy about doing that. It comes down to whether a creative wants to, or is willing to, work in an organisation that is their modus operandi.

As a company, Immersive Everywhere takes on IP. We license an IP, we develop it out, and we bring those shows to the world. Spoiler alert: further down the line, there is original IP that we will bring to the world when the time is right. It's work we will have developed internally as a company, but right now isn't the right time because we're having too much fun and are really excited about developing IP into various different experiences.

It's that balance of personal and business. There is no wrong answer, and there is no right answer to that question because it really comes down to, speaking specifically as creatives, not as business people, what do you want to do?

Photo: Hugo Glendinning

IR: I’ve got to ask you at least one question specifically about The Traitors: Live Experience, which opens in July. Without spoiling the experience, can you tell us what happens to people who get banished or murdered, and is it still going to be a satisfying experience for those who are eliminated first? 

Neil: Well.. I've designed an experience that is incredibly satisfying for everybody playing in an incredibly intense environment that has incredible subject matter. At the end of the day, it is a game, and you pay to play; you don't pay to win. Within the game, there are winners and there are losers, but we've designed an experience that guarantees that everybody has an incredibly satisfying experience, and it is always a win-win scenario.

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The Traitors: Live Experience opens in Covent Garden this July. To find out more about the show and book tickets, visit thetraitorslive.co.uk. To find out more about Immersive Everywhere, visit theeverywheregroup.com.

This interview is part of Immersive Rumours' coverage of the World Experience Summit and London Experience Week 2025, which has been made possible thanks to the World Experience Organization.