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One man’s plan to bring a $25 million “Portal” show to Vegas

A big-budget Las Vegas stage show based on one of the biggest video game franchises of all time? The Internet could make it happen.

 

Michelle Jaworski

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Posted on Dec 27, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 4:41 am CDT

One blogger needs your help to make his dream of bringing a real-life stage show of Portal to life—and it’ll only cost a cool $25 million, The Mary Sue reported.

Gordon Knott pictured the spectacular as being similar to “Cirque du Soleil” but better and would be willing to take the show to Las Vegas, Disneyland and Universal Studios. It would be a theme park-style stage show using scenes found in Portal and Portal 2 full of portals, GLaDOS, Chell, robots and crazy stunts.

Knott also promised cake—although that might be a lie.

He wrote out a proposal on his blog where he listed the supplies he would need to make the show happen, including several cannons, trap doors, trampolines, bungee cords, lighting and special effects and have portals all over the auditorium where the show would take place.

Some of his supplies may be harder to obtain if the show were to happen. Knott wants to build an animatronic GLaDOS, use music by Daft Punk, use a script—which would be a prequel to the first Portal—written by Ricky Gervais and get Gervais, Stephen Merchant and or Karl Pilkington to provide voices.

Knott doesn’t exactly break down where that $25 million will go, but he hopes to break even in about two years with the help of merchandising and making a 25-minute show so that he can process more customers.

“This is a one off fee to develop and build the first set,” Knott wrote. “After that we can replicate it at theme parks around the world for a fraction of the price.”

He didn’t make a Kickstarter campaign but put his idea out there in hopes that people will contribute to his dream.

To give people an idea of what a $25 million Portal stage show might look like, Knott linked to a video from the fan-made short film Portal: No Escape.

Knott also posted his idea to Reddit, but he has received a lukewarm response so far.

“Would you not be entertained?” Knott asked after a redditor called him an overzealous Portal fan.

We certainly would.

Photo via seantyler/Flickr

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*First Published: Dec 27, 2012, 8:01 pm CST