Warner Studio Tour boasts 'Central' perks
BURBANK, Calif. — Two and a Half Men has a new home. Right next to the Friends coffee shop.
On Friday, Warner Bros. Studios Tour Hollywood officially opened Stage 48: Script to Screen, a 25,000-square-foot former soundstage which now houses the Men living room along with the Central Perk coffee shop.
"Believe me, these (Warner) people never get rid of anything," says Men star Jon Cryer. "It's great to see the set again and it's an honor to have it placed here."
USA TODAY picks a few high points from the new Studio Tour experience.
Park it at Perk: The Central Perk coffeehouse has been a fixture, in a smaller footprint, on the Warner lot since NBC uber-series Friends went off the air in 2004.
Now in its permanent home, the entire set is restored to its full-scale size, including the original coffee machine, the (fake) doughnuts on the counter and the orange couch where Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc spent their free time.
Guests can play out scenes from the couch against original footage from the show on monitors. A reproduction of Phoebe's "Smelly Cat" guitar hangs nearby.
The final touch: The actual coffee shop at the tour entrance is a functional Central Perk facility.
"That's funny, since we never actually made coffee on the show," says James Michael Tyler, who played Central Perk manager Gunther.
'Men'-made: The living room from the Two and a Half Men Malibu house has been re-assembled right down to Ashton Kutcher's retro aviator-inspired desk next to mannequins attired in costumes worn by Walden Schmidt (Kutcher), Alan Harper (Cryer) and Jake Harper (Angus T. Jones).
"It's kind of jarring," says Cryer, who saw the set at a preview party last week. "We just kind of mourned the loss of the show. Now it's been brought back to life."
Houston, there's no problem here: Ryan Stone's space capsule from Sandra Bullock's Oscar-nominated performance in 2013's Gravity landed a permanent home after sitting in Warner storage. It's part of a visual demonstration of how director Alfonso Cuarón painstakingly shot anti-gravity footage.
"It's a realistic space capsule, like one you'd see at NASA. But it's built to get the shot Cuarón wanted," says Danny Kahn, the tour's executive director.
Get swept away by 'Harry Potter': The Firebolt broomstick from the Harry Potter movies has a prominent place at the studio. Guests can also ride a broomstick against green screen, which portrays them flying throughout London on the monitor.
"We wanted to allow people to feel like they are an actor on a green-screen soundstage flying a broomstick, right down to wind being blown through their hair," says Kahn.
The 'Hobbit' table is set: Director Peter Jackson's New Zealand-based special effects team helped re-create the table from the The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring meeting between Hobbit Bilbo and wizard Gandalf. Using a forced-perspective optical illusion, the real image skews appropriately on the monitor.
"One guest grows Hobbit-size. One grows Gandalf-size. It's a great gag," says Kahn.
Men of steel and women of wonder: Henry Cavill's Superman outfit from Zack Snyder's Man of Steel is on display, close to Christopher Reeve's cape from 1978's Superman. The latter is displayed in the Legacy Room, where prized artifacts such as Academy Awards are housed.
"We have a lot of supermen represented and women," says Kahn. "Lynda Carter's original Wonder Woman outfit is also on display in the Legacy Room."