We’ve had plenty of goes on Pirates of the Caribbean, taken a Jungle Cruise, visited a Haunted Mansion, and will do so again in 2023, and now Disney have tapped Hawkeye directors Bert & Bertie with directing a big screen take on their Big Thunder Mountain ride.
People scoffed at the idea of movies based on theme park rides, but in 2003 the double-whammy of The Haunted Mansion ($182M) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl ($654M) proved that audiences would queue for a movie based on a tourist attraction almost as much as they would for the ride itself.
2021’s Jungle Cruise may have had its box-office diminished by the pandemic, but a $220M worldwide gross seems enough to convince the studio to spend some of those Disney dollars on another theme park blockbuster.
Deadline reports that Hawkeye directors Bert & Bertie, who have also helmed episodes of HBO’s critically acclaimed Our Flag Means Death, will direct a film based on Big Thunder Mountain, a mine cart ride set in a mining town, which was first opened in 1979 in Disneyland, Anaheim.
Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free will be producing, while Kieran and Michele Mulroney (Power Rangers, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) are attempting to come up with the script.
Is this the end of narrative cinema as we know it, or are you looking forward to taking a ticket for a ride on Big Thunder Mountain? Let us know by heading to our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
