And we mean disaster of the highest order. It’s well know that Disney has been making plans to w***e out their classic attractions into films, the “Country Bears” being the first. And now, according to Sci-Fi Wire, Disney is thinking of altering the rides to suit the films being made. If anyone’s been to Disneyland lately, they’ll notice that the Country Bears Jamboree is closed for remodelling. Now it appears as though The Haunted Mansion may be closing its gates sometime in the near future for a permanent alteration.
Rob Minkoff (“Stuart Little”) will be directing “The Haunted Mansion” film, which is to star Eddie Murphy.
“They have a strategy at Disneyland that one of the things they have to do is bring people back to the park,” director Rob Minkoff said. “(Changing rides) is the way they do it. … When they have an opportunity to do something new, to give it a little bit of a reawakening, they’re very excited.”
“There are some of the images from the ride that we are going to incorporate into the storytelling, but really the goal is you’ll watch this movie as its own thing,” Minkoff said. “It’s not about a ride. What will happen is you’ll see the movie, and you’ll go, ‘Oh, I understand slightly differently what that meant (in the ride).’ It will actually have more of an inflection on the ride than the ride will have an inflection on the movie… I’ve been going to Disneyland forever, and I’ve been on that ride so many times. I always said to myself, ‘Wouldn’t this make a cool movie?’ When I got the call and they said, ‘Do you want to make a movie out of this?’ it was suddenly like, ‘God, I guess I have to.'”
If they wind up putting an animatronic Eddie Murphy in The Haunted Mansion, we here at Film Threat think Walt Disney is gonna rise from his grave and burn that place down and then when he’s done, he’s gonna take care of that waste of space California Adventure, too.
