The newest big-screen Haunted Mansion adaptation is, to quote the overwhelming majority of critics, “bad.” The failure of a movie based on a Disney amusement park ride is undeniably a body blow to the studio — the sort that nobody could have seen coming, save for the people who made the first Haunted Mansion movie; the people who made The Muppets Haunted Mansion; the people who made Jungle Cruise; the people who made The Country Bears and Tomorrowland; the people who made Mission to Mars; the people who made that Tower of Terror TV movie with Steve Guttenberg back in the ‘90s; and the people who made Pirates of the Caribbean two, three, four, five, and six.
But as Walt himself observed, the House of Mouse is all about the willingness to “keep moving forward.” Trying new things. Opening new doors. Spending the GDP of Guam on more blockbuster reimaginings of a thing you vaguely remember sitting in for three minutes while you were sun-stroked on vacation in Florida last summer. If Curse of the Black Pearl was a one-in-a-million success, then we’ve only got 999,990 of these left before Disney hits the jackpot once again. Here are some ideas. Let’s spitball. Let’s pitch.
9: The Monorail
A young adult dystopian throwback to the days of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner. In a world where trains were expected to run on two or more rails, one very special young woman (one of the Euphoria kids, TBD) dared to dream of less — of a future where mass transit cars look like they’re melting over the top of a concrete bridge, like if Salvador Dali got into mid-century modern infrastructure design. Flying in the face of adversity, she’ll face off against the members of the barbaric Two-Rail Clan, the fringe thinkers from Camp Three-Rail, and the snooty No-Rail elites in their floating, railless domed cities.
8: Prince Charming Regal Carrousel
Okay, so you’ve got this horse. He’s probably voiced by Keegan-Michael Key. He’s sad because he’s part of a carousel and there’s no room for him to move forward, up to the next spot ahead of him on the carousel. No upward mobility. He escapes his confines and battles… something. An evil something. We’ll fill that part in later. We’ll see if we can get Cillian Murphy for the evil something.
Over the course of the movie, and with the help of, I don’t know, a cat (Kate McKinnon), he learns that there’s a sort of beauty in the circular nature of both life and being stuck on a carousel. Progress is illusory, he realizes, and we’re all trapped in our own loop. Better to keep doing what you’ve been doing, for as long as it takes, and find joy in the knowledge that you’ll live out your days staring at the back half of the guy in front of you. He returns to his place and happily continues his thankless, never-ending journey in meaningless circles for the benefit of his monarchic overlords.
It sounds bleak, but it’s going to go a long way toward indoctrinating the MCU’s next generation of CGI artists.
7: Spaceship Earth
This one’s pretty straightforward — a direct adaptation of Spaceship Earth. The movie opens with a 40-minute shot of a large ball, really capturing what it’s like to walk into EPCOT and get in line for the first thing you see. That’s act one.
In acts two and three, Judi Dench gives you the SparkNotes version of the history of the human race, glossing over a lot of the slavery, plagues, genocides, holy wars, bloodsport, factory farming, and Steven Seagal. Also, to really nail the experience of being on Spaceship Earth, the movie stops every couple of minutes and an overworked teenager comes on over the intercom and tells you to remain seated.
6: Journey Into Imagination with Figment
For too long, Figment fans have been forced to wait for a silver-screen adaptation. For too long, the worst thing on most parents’ Blu-Ray shelves has been a collection of episodes of Caillou.
All of that can change if Disney grits its teeth and finally drops the $350 million necessary to bring Figment and his skulduggery to theaters across the globe.
This thing practically writes itself; like in the ride, Figment is a mischievous little dragon with a voice pitched up to the point where it makes dogs cry, and his tomfoolery is poorly received at the Imagination Institute. Like in the ride, his back-and-forth with Dr. Nigel Channing leads to tension — even disaster. Like in the ride, Dr. Channing inexplicably turns into a sleep paralysis demon version of the Moon from The Mighty Boosh and stares directly into your soul for a while. Unlike in the ride, at the end of the movie, everyone eats Figment.
5: The Tiki Room
It’s frankly bananas that we haven’t seen a Tiki (Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki) Room movie yet. All of the hallmarks of classical Campbell-esque monomythic story structure are there.
The call to adventure: Someone (Finn Wolfhard) gets invited to the Tiki Room. Refusal of the call: They (Finn Wolfhard) don’t want to go to the Tiki Room. Crossing the threshold: They (still Finn Wolfhard) go to the Tiki Room. Belly of the Whale: They (Finn Wolfhard, Universal Pictures’ The Turning) are in the Tiki Room.
And so on. Fingers crossed, we can get Finn Wolfhard. I think he’d be great for this.
4: Canada Far and Wide in Circle-Vision 360
If Disney World truly is the Most Magical Place on Earth, then the Canada Pavilion is the most magical place at Disney World. Hidden in the back of an easily-overlooked cranny of the park, it beckons to the tired, the overheated, the hypoglycemic, and the sore. “Come,” it seems to say. “Sit in a plaster mine shaft and look at your phone for a minute.”
Then, riding a high of unearthly peace, visitors are ushered into a room where they stand for longer than anticipated. Omniscopic images of the Great White North play overhead. Like the gods of old, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara speak from the heavens. Their voices are as polite thunder to the ears of mortals. They explain what Canada is while the audience mostly goes back to checking their phones.
And that’s what the movie would be — the stars of Schitt’s Creek creating inoffensive background noise for 140 minutes while you check Instagram on your phone in an air-conditioned AMC. This started as a joke, but it might just be what saves the movie theater industry.
3: The Pop Eats grilled cheese and tomato soup vendor at EPCOT
This one’s an animated feature. Chris Pratt plays Sandy, a grilled cheese sandwich who doesn’t want to be served with a can of tomato soup named Little Miss Soup, voiced by Jenna Fischer. As the two are being plated, a torrential hurricane blows them all the way to the other side of the Three Caballeros boat ride in the Mexico pavilion, where they learn that cultural appropriation is wrong.
During their journey back to the sandwich stand, Sandy and Little Miss Soup learn the value of teamwork, and that they really do work better together. When they get home, they are thrown away, because they’re food that’s been all over the ground for an hour and a half. In 20 years, Jon Favreau makes a live-action version featuring photorealistic sandwiches and soups that don’t move or talk for the sake of not breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief. It breaks box-office records and gets a 19% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
2: Autopia
What we’re going for here is an appeal to the old-world nostalgia of classic Disney rides. Autopia has been around since Disneyland first opened its doors to the public, so there’s got to be a built-in audience of fans there.
Here’s the great part about this pitch: We could subtly incorporate all of the car-themed rides at Disney parks into the story, from Autopia to the Chevrolet Test Track, because instead of being a movie about people in a car-based society, driving around a closed circuit like they do on the ride, we’re going to tell the story of a society made up of cars. The cars themselves are the characters. Racecars, sports cars, tow trucks. It would be a whole world of cars — heck, throw a couple of planes in there for good measure. It’s the sort of original idea that could carry a computer-animated franchise for three movies and a spin-off with zero chance of diminishing returns.
1: Mad Tea Party
Another straightforward one. We stick a camera in a centrifuge and release whatever comes out the other side in 3,300 theaters. Yes, some ticket holders are going to discover that they have epilepsy as a result of the movie, but there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Taika Waititi directs, Lin-Manuel Miranda writes the soundtrack. The whole thing is surprisingly moving. It wins an Oscar for best cinematography thanks to whoever nominated Bohemian Rhapsody for editing.