News Disney is Making a Disney+ Original Movie About the Creation of Disneyland

VJ

VJ

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
brb1006 said:
Looks like this will be the closest The Walt Disney Company can get to making an actual biopic about "Walt Disney". And no, "Saving Mr. Banks" doesn't count.
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a small but important distinction: the closest they choose to get
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
raven24 said:
The movie will most likely have plenty of stuff that never happened and will probably be a fake recount of history, like Saving Mr. Banks was.
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That was exactly my thought too.

How much of this will be factual and accurate, and how much will be modified history or just plain made up to make a 21st century audience feel better about buying Disney products?
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
What David Gordon Green and the producers of this movie really need to do is go to the experts on Disneyland; the Magic Kingdom Park Tour Guides who host the $99 Keys To The Kingdom Tour!

Those ladies are the leading experts in their field! They can tell the story of how a childhood Walt wished downtown Marceline had outlined white lights on all the buildings, and how Walt first opened Disneyland's Tiki Room as a polynesian restaurant but had to close it quickly because 1960's Californians were so stupid they thought the robot birds were going to crap into their teriyaki chicken.

Mr. Green, go to the 22:40 mark in this video and learn what to put in your movie! 🧐

 
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TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
CaptinEO said:
Yes it'll be about how Walt worked with transgenders and people of color to create Disneyland and the Finding Nemo Subs.
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You joke, but it's scary that it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility these days.

While I doubt we'll be forced to sit through a lecture on how one of the original mermaids in the Sub lagoon was secretly a white-passing transgender Latina, I do think there's an opportunity to get a few of the women's names out there who got Disneyland off the ground. There's Ruth Shellhorn, the lady landscape designer who did almost all the park landscaping in 1955, for one. Also the more famous lady Imagineers; Alice Davis, Mary Blair, Harriet Burns. Any others? I'm tapped out, at least for the 1950's.

But then there's the simple fact that the majority of Imagineers in 1953-1956 were white men. I know it's unfashionable to mention that demographic, but they can't tell the story of Disneyland without showing a lot of middle aged white guys wandering around a dusty Anaheim orange grove for a year.

On the flip side, he could get some pretty good comedy in there by including Jack Lindquist and his old Cadillac convertible he bombed around Anaheim in during the mid 50's.

That said, I don't have high hopes for this movie at all. I just read Mr. Green's bio on Wikipedia and it's not hopeful. He's not a Californian, he's born and raised and educated back East and he lives in South Carolina. He directs cheesy comedies and gory horror movies that aren't big hits. Now I'm kicking myself for telling him to take the Marceline To Magic Kingdom tour at WDW, because he probably actually will and think he's done his research. Oops! :oops:
 
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brb1006

brb1006

Well-Known Member
TP2000 said:
That was exactly my thought too.

How much of this will be factual and accurate, and how much will be modified history or just plain made up to make a 21st century audience feel better about buying Disney products?
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Now that I think about it, Disney making a legit biopic of Walt Disney would be very difficult to pull off. Guess the company is extremely scared at showing the darker side of him. Possibly in fear of the general public suddenly turning against them. Especially after the release of "Jobs" and "The Founder".

As of 2021, the only attempt at a Walt Disney biopic is "Walt before Mickey"which was fanmade and focused on Walt's childhood.

It would be a miracle if Disney actually made this become a reality and turn out knows. In the future. But this is the Chapek era, so who knows.
 
brb1006

brb1006

Well-Known Member
TP2000 said:
You joke, but it's scary that it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility these days.

While I doubt we'll be forced to sit through a lecture on how one of the original mermaids in the Sub lagoon was secretly a white-passing transgender Latina, I do think there's an opportunity to get a few of the women's names out there who got Disneyland off the ground. There's Ruth Shellhorn, the lady landscape designer who did almost all the park landscaping in 1955, for one. Also the more famous lady Imagineers; Alice Davis, Mary Blair, Harriet Burns. Any others? I'm tapped out, at least for the 1950's.

But then there's the simple fact that the majority of Imagineers in 1953-1956 were white men. I know it's unfashionable to mention that demographic, but they can't tell the story of Disneyland without showing a lot of middle aged white guys wandering around a dusty Anaheim orange grove for a year.

On the flip side, he could get some pretty good comedy in there by including Jack Lindquist and his old Cadillac convertible he bombed around Anaheim in during the mid 50's.

That said, I don't have high hopes for this movie at all. I just read Mr. Green's bio on Wikipedia and it's not hopeful. He's not a Californian, he's born and raised and educated back East and he lives in South Carolina. He directs cheesy comedies and gory horror movies that aren't big hits. Now I'm kicking myself for telling him to take the Marceline To Magic Kingdom tour at WDW, because he probably actually will and think he's done his research. Oops! :oops:
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Didn't one of the people working on this also work on Piglet's Big Movie?
 
el_super

el_super

Well-Known Member
KIGhostGuy said:
The best telling of Disneyland's birth is Three Years in Wonderland by Todd James Pierce. I can't recommend that book enough.
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I would agree... that book would certainly contain enough drama to fill a movie... but it would never happen for two important reasons. Disney excommunicated CV Wood and completely removed him from Disneyland's official history, and Disney would probably not sanction any version of Walt that was not the heroic protagonist of the story.

Which makes you wonder where the "drama" of the story would come from? Walt against the bankers? Walt against Roy? Walt against the critics? Walt against time itself? Really seems hard to base a movie on the premise that the park MIGHT not be a success, so far after its been a success.

What made the Three Years in Wonderland book great was really getting into the nuts and bolts of what needed to happen to get Disneyland up and running and how rough those first few years really were. It highlights some of the compromises and in-fighting that occured and its hard to imagine Disney wanting to represent anything that is less than perfect from the start, especially if it comes to Walt himself.

It would certainly be fun though, if they could dedicate some time and effort in truly recreating a CGI version of 1955 Disneyland.
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
el_super said:
I would agree... that book would certainly contain enough drama to fill a movie... but it would never happen for two important reasons. Disney excommunicated CV Wood and completely removed him from Disneyland's official history, and Disney would probably not sanction any version of Walt that was not the heroic protagonist of the story.
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Ooh! CV Wood! That's a really good point.

el_super said:
Which makes you wonder where the "drama" of the story would come from? Walt against the bankers? Walt against Roy? Walt against the critics? Walt against time itself? Really seems hard to base a movie on the premise that the park MIGHT not be a success, so far after its been a success.
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Another very good point. I just can't imagine modern day Hollywood not trying some PC revisionist history here though. You've got to get non-white non-men into the storyline or else it won't fly.

I fear they'll try and include Lillian into the story more, even though she was quite content to be the typical early to mid 20th century housewife and keep the household running and children prospering instead of getting into her husband's business dealings. Do they dare try and rewrite Lillian's life into some business savvy silent partner? I hope not.

el_super said:
It would certainly be fun though, if they could dedicate some time and effort in truly recreating a CGI version of 1955 Disneyland.
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Yes, us super fans would love it. But an accurate look at 1955 Disneyland is going to be dusty and bare and jarringly unattractive to 99% of the audience. Plus hokey looking and very politically incorrect. Would Disney dare such a thing? I don't think they have it in them to portray 1955 Disneyland accurately.

Frontierland, October 1955
BW_10_55_ScanA.jpg
 
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TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
Here's some good news I just thought of...

Ford Vs. Ferrari. That was a recent business-based non fiction movie set in the mid 1960's. Yes, artistic liberties were taken to jazz up the action and the racing. But they kept it real and allowed the movie to be all about who actually took place in that real history; heterosexual WASP men. They didn't rewrite the history of who Henry Ford II or Carrol Shelby were, or who their business teams were made up of (more heterosexual WASP men).

So, in Hollywood's defense, they are capable of making movies about the mid 20th century without trying to turn a mermaid into a brave transgender Latina.

But, I do hope they leave Lillian out of all this.
 

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