Every Disney Theme Park Ride Movie That Is Somehow Still in Development

With two Pirates of the Caribbean scripts in the works as of earlier this year, producer Jerry Bruckheimer told the Hollywood Reporter, “We’re gonna reboot Pirates, so that is easier to put together because you don’t have to wait for certain actors.” One of the two that seems like it will come together before a proposed Margot Robbie film, which Bruckheimer believes will still get made, is a Pirates project from The Last of Us’ Craig Mazin and screenwriter Ted Elliott with an all-new cast. Despite that “all-new” promise, fingers crossed that Keira Knightley comes back in one of them as the Pirate Queen.

Back in 2021, For All Mankind’s Ronald D. Moore became attached to showrun a number of Magic Kingdom universe tales for television. The first: a series inspired by the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, a deep cut Easter egg for theme park nerds. It refers to a fictional secret society composed of people who have had a hand in the history of certain theme park rides and their fantastical artifacts, along with famous adventurers and explorers from the Disney-owned film universes. For example, Jock Lindsay’s Hanger Bar is a real bar you can go to at Walt Disney World; it’s also known to be a place that members of this society have frequented, since Jock Lindsay is a member along with Marion Ravenwood—both characters from the Indiana Jones franchise. The society is also name-dropped in the recent Jungle Cruise movie, and specific rides from all over the world feature symbols to tie all this untold lore together. It’s a lot to dig into and somehow connects theme park ride backstory lore into a shared reality with other big Disney IP.

While there hasn’t been an update on the series in the intervening years, Deadline announced in 2022 a live-action film also based on the SEA (but unconnected to the TV series) was being produced by Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort and written by Strange World’s Qui Nguyen.

Disney fans were surprised just last year by an update revealing the Big Thunder Mountain movie would be helmed by Bert and Bertie—directing team Amber Templemore-Finlayson and Katie Ellwood—of Hawkeye and Our Flag Means Death action fame. The duo are some of the most exciting filmmakers on the scene with a knack for kick-ass action and comedy. This one we’re hoping comes together because if you’re familiar with the ride, it’s a crazy train mine expedition which could be a heist movie... and there’s dynamite. It’s the wildest ride in the wilderness and we’re ready for it.

Late last week the Hollywood Reporter revealed that a new film project based on Space Mountain is in the works. In 2020 a similar project had Obi-Wan Kenobi writers attached, but now has switched it up to the writers of Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop and the last two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action films. Let’s wait and see if there’s new writers in four to five years.

If you’ve ever ridden any iteration of Journey Into Imagination With Figment, you know it’s always been a fever dream of a ride centering on an imaginary magical purple dragon with a penchant for chaos. The current version is an assault on the senses in every way but the lore of the ride is beloved by original Walt Disney World fans. In any case, this upcoming film project is really exciting as it has the writers of Detective Pikachu and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem attached to pen the script with Seth Rogen producing. After the incredible work they did on Mutant Mayhem, we hope they combine all the lore into a massive trip of colorful purple dragon chaos. Also please throw in Eric Idle in the film so he can finally meet Figment, or as he called him:

io9 talked to filmmaker David Gordon Green last year about his Disneyland film, which is set to center Walt Disney (and his brother Roy) when he set out to build the risky theme park that no one believed would be a hit. The biopic is currently “on pause right now. There’s some rights issues,” Green told io9, but it sounded like he hopes to get back to it: “That was going to be a lot of fun. It’s a really interesting story about the brothers.”

This one is tricky because it’s an attraction inspired by The Twilight Zone television show but not actually a real part of Rod Serling’s lore. Nevertheless, as an alternate to not quite being able to crack the Haunted Mansion mythology—our suggestion: make it an anthology series, a la Mike Flanagan—The Tower of Terror is in the works as a horror film starring Scarlett Johansson and written by Toy Story 4's Josh Cooley. CBR reported an update last year when Johansson told The Today Show it’s still in motion: “Now that the writers’ strike is all over with, we’re finally able to dive back into polishing up this script. It’s a massive, huge undertaking.”

While the Rock’s DC takeover didn’t pan out as planned, Dwayne Johnson still has a lot of projects in the works—including a Jungle Cruise sequel, which was announced right after the first film’s release. Recently the action star told Variety he hopes to re-team with Emily Blunt on Jungle Cruise 2 for Disney, though it sounds like it’s not happening anytime soon: “Possibly. Down the line, yeah, I’d wanna do it. Maybe, we’ll see.”

Back in 2014 Deadline reported that National Treasure’s Jon Turteltaub was attached to helm a film inspired by the global small children puppet ride with that earworm song everyone just loves. There’s been no real update since.

Even further back in 2011, the Hollywood Reporter shared that a Matterhorn film was also in development.

One that seems to have gotten away is Jon Favreau’s Magic Kingdom movie. Announced in 2010, the project was meant to be loosely based off Kingdom Keepers, a book series about teens who become hologram hosts at the Orlando park, then become virtually entangled in adventures as Disney IP comes to life in the digital world—including villains who then attempt to take over the real world. We think it was going to be very Ready Player One in a sense. Back in 2016 it was still on his mind... but, well, the following tweet did not age well!

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