Disneyland Attraction Movies: Part 1 - The Future

This is the first part of a three part series about Disneyland Rides as movies. This part deals with the films rides that have movies in contention at Disney Studios. Part 2 will deal with the Pirates movies and Part 3 will be about the miscilaneuous rides turned into movies or movies that influenced rides that no one talks about such as Haunted Mansion, Tower of Terror and other Disney building adventures.

After the success of Pirates of the Caribbean: Episode I - The Curse of the Black Pearl Disney thought it would be a good idea to make more movies after their rides and sections of their amusements parks.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Episode I - The Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean: Episode II - Dead Man’s Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean: Episode III - At World’s End

Pirates of the Caribbean: Episode IV - On Stranger Tides

Pirates of the Caribbean: Episode V - Dead Men Tell No Tales

Captain Jack Sparrow has to find the Trident of Poseidon to ward off his old enemy Captain Salazar. Dead Men Tell No Tales stars Johnny Depp, with Orlando Bloom somehow reprising his role from the first three. Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg are directing and Jeff Nathanson wrote the script. It seems Orlando Bloom is coming back as his character may be stuck on the bottom of the ocean and turning all Davey Jones CGI face like his father before him. They are saying the movie will heavily tie into the first, The Curse of the Black Pearl.

The rest of these ride adaptations have been less successful, but are still nonetheless forever connected to the legacy of their ride or corner of the park:

Tower of Terror - Steve Gutenberg

The Country Bears - Christopher Walken

The Haunted Mansion - Eddie Murphy

Tomorrowland - Britt Robertson

Upcoming:

Haunted Mansion — Guillermo del Toro has been tasked to resurrect and reboot Haunted Mansion after Eddie Murphy killed it in 2003. First announced in 2010 he promised to actually base his film off of the aesthetics the Imagineers put into the actual Haunted Mansion attraction. Supposedly “Hat Box Ghost” will play a huge part as well as the seafaring Blood family within the films mythology.

It’s a Small World — In 2014 Jon Turteltaub was hired to direct Small World from writer Jared Stern and producer Dan Lin, who helped build Warner Brothers’ The Lego Movie‘s. I think adding the Disney characters throughout the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland was a good idea. I don’t know how a movie would do, unless you can get the message across perfectly. May be better suited as a Pixar film.

Jungle Cruise — Right after the success of Pirates, the Jungle Cruise movie was set up, Tom Hanks would play a dad on vacation, while Tim Allen would play the river boat skipper as they traveled the rivers of the world. The writer of DisneyToon Studios’ The Jungle Book 2, Robert Schulman, and also Shrek, wrote it to take place in 1955, the year Disneyland opened. But now Dwayne The Rock Johnson has been handed the Jungle Cruise keys and tapped writers/directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra to pen the script. Both are very competent writers and directors and The Rock himself said on Instagram, “[We hope to] push the envelope in a smart, edgy, epically fun way.” Hopefully the ride will take into account the corny skipper jokes.

Magic Kingdom — Jon Favreau and writer Michael Chabon were wanting to do it like Night at the Museum in Disneyland, and since Night at the Museum is a Fox franchise and this could be their Disney take on it. But plans have been on hold and plans will continue to be on hold probably forever now after the lackluster welcome of Tomorrowland. And Jon moved on to remaking The Jungle Book once more in live action.

Matterhorn (The Hill) — While they was never a movie, when Walt Disney was vacationing in Switzerland and filming Third Man on the Mountain he felt inspired by the real life Matterhorn and sent a postcard to Imagineer Vic Greene with the message, “Vic. Build This. Walt.” A giant postcard picture booth now sits next to the ride in Disneyland. Currently Disney hired Jason Dean Hall to write a script entitled The Hill with help from Tron: Legacy producer Justin Springer about a group of explorers on the Matterhorn in Switzerland encounter yetis. I suppose if Everest (2015) does well for Universal, than Disney will be more inclined to make this one.

Tiki — Ahmet Zappa and Michael Wilson wrote a spec script, loosely based on the classic Enchanted Tiki Room. The story is said to use Polynesian mythology and be set in Hawaii. This one sounds more like an internet rumor.

Check back for part 2, which we'll have a link to down here once it's written.

For now heres Disney's Upcoming Giant Movie Schedule: