Zillion was a discotheque in the Jan van Gentstraat in the Belgian city of Antwerp, which existed from 1997 to 2002. It was managed by Frank Verstraeten, but was eventually closed after various illegal practices and lawsuits involving its employees. The building that housed the Zillion was demolished in January 2017 to make way for a new construction project called "The Residence".

Disco
On October 16, 1997, the doors of the Zillion opened without the media hype that the disco would later know. Most visitors came from the province of Antwerp and the Netherlands. A striking feature of the disco was the immense technical infrastructure. After the emergence of previous mega discotheques such as Dockside (now Versuz) in Hasselt and Boccaccio (formerly Riva, The Temple, later BOCCA) in Destelbergen, few new dance chains had opened and smaller, specialized discos in particular enjoyed great popularity. The Zillion filled this gap in the market perfectly, thanks in part to a light show that completely rotated around the dance floor and 500 intelligent spots, such as moving heads and scans. In addition, to enhance the visual aspect, industrial robots, fireworks, confetti cannons, an aquarium and a dance floor that could hydraulically drop about 25 cm were used. The music style could be placed under the heading dance and trance.

The Zillion had several resident DJs such as Sven Lanvin, Alain Faber, Alain Cornet, David, Dave Lambert, Mike Thompson, Fou, Levi, Olivier Pieters, Bart Maes, Tom Leclerq, Kevin Belushi, Mario and Elof.[1]

The hall was also regularly used for major television events by TMF and other youth channels. For example, on November 13, 1998, the MTV Music Awards were held with Prince Laurent as the guest of honor.

Shooting for the film Zillion started in 2021.[2]

Legal issues
From the beginning, there were all kinds of problems with the "Zillion". Verstraeten is said to have applied for a building permit to convert a sports complex into a multifunctional space[3] of which the discotheque would have formed only a small part. A maximum of 1,500 visitors would be provided. In practice, the promised sports and theater halls were not visible[3] and space was provided for 4,000 people. That same opening month, PVs were registered for non-compliance with the building permit, fire hazard and nighttime noise.

In the years that followed, the disco was associated with various criminal activities, such as illegal possession of weapons, unlicensed storage of fireworks, bribery, money laundering and tax fraud, fencing, insider trading, public defamation and assault.

Discotheque BBC bought stuff that was in the Zillion during the public sale, including the big fan. The spider's truss frames returned to Techno-Construct. The pool was bought by Club Famous, but was never rebuilt.

The buildings were purchased by the urban development company AG Vespa and demolished at the beginning of 2017.[4] The moving stages, the falling dance floor and the spin construction were irrevocably lost. Some enthusiasts were still able to recover parts of the star gate and the logo.[5]