Disney stans will go to tremendous lengths to immerse themselves in the legendary studio’s catalogue of animated classics, from taking week-long Disney cruises, to buying into timeshares that let them spend part of the year living on-site at Disney World and Tokyo Disney. But now, thanks to Toronto-based Lighthouse Immersive, Disney fans can literally enter the entertainment brand’s cartoon world of color-saturated whimsy.
The exhibition company is behind the successful touring art exhibits like “The Immersive Van Gogh,” which take classic works of art and using sound design, animation, and big-screen projection, invites viewers to step into the worlds created by a great artist who is too-long dead to have an estate that can stop them.
And now, per the Toronto Star, the company has signed a deal with Walt Disney Animation Studios to use their entire catalogue of art, from the first short film, “Steamboat Willie,” to its latest, Encanto.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the creative team for the project includes J. Miles Dale, who won an Academy Award for his work as a producer on Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. He described the project to THR as “A combination of an art exhibit and movie theater.”
The exhibit will open at Lighthouse’s studio in December 2022, before touring across the United States in early 2023, with a multi-city tour that will include cultural hot spots Cleveland, Detroit, and Boston, with plans for a stop at Disneyland in the works. According to THR, a subsequent international tour is in the works, with no details to announce just yet.