Rumors: the script for Haunted Mansion apparently has nothing to do with the storyline from the attraction. Think A Christmas Carol with lots of Eddie-stuff to yuck things up. And the story for The Country Bears movie is only related to Country Bear Jamboree because both shows have singing bruins. The script for Pirates is being re-re-re-re-re-re-written so that plenty of stuff blows up real good.
The trend in Hollywood right now is the pre-sold concept. Marketing costs a lot of money. Its become cheaper and easier to sell a movie if the public already knows the concept behind it. And the economics of Hollywood requires that every film is as much of sure thing as possible. Something thats already proven popular is a much safer investment. Hence you get all the sequels and remakes of televisions series as movies.
Disney is not willing to buy rights to TV shows, popular books or comic book characters and has been looking for its own source of pre-sold concepts. They first tried big events because of Titanic, but Pearl Harbor fell flat and The Alamo is falling apart before it gets before the camera.
So now Disney is trying its theme park shows. They know that large chunks of the public already know about Pirates, Mansion and Small World and that they are popular. Just the movie title Pirates of the Caribbean will get people into the theaters just like a movie title of Spiderman or Scooby Doo.
But unlike Spider-man, the stories behind the rides arent full enough to make a feature film out of. Worse, most people in the film division dont think too much of the parks anyway; theyre certain they are much more creative than just an amusement park they never go to. So, the rides are being used as little more than titles and the writers have been told to come up with good plots instead.
Whats really going to be interesting is how the public reacts. When people go to the theater expecting a colorful collection of bears and instead get a bunch of burnt-out ratty 60s folksingers in the background of an intelligence-challenged Im adopted??!!! plotline, things could get interesting.
The rest of the ride movies are on hold right now. They were supposed to be a series of small films with high profit margins. Theyve now turned into massively expensive movies that are going to require blockbuster results to make money. Since Disney is dramatically cutting back on its production budget, theres little money left for Space Mountain or Big Thunder.
Its sad these people have learned nothing at all from The Princess Diaries and The Rookie.
