Again I read screamscape.com and here's what it said....tell me if this sounds accurate to you; they don't mention anything about Indiana jones in this....which is a little surprising; seems like the indy show is gonna stick around I guess for years, years, and years..
New Park Name - Confirmed - (3/19/15) While there has been little said about what or when Disney’s Hollywood Studios will get renamed, we do know tha a new name is coming, one way or the other. That said, it appears that Disney isn’t even testing the Trademark waters just yet on this, as I poked around for new names and could find nothing out of the ordinary. So for the time being the possibility for new names is wide open… though with rumors of major new developments in the works that could see famous properties like Star Wars and Marvel brought into the mix, as well as big concepts like a Cars Land being floated around previously, I would think whatever new name they choose would try to project an image of the new adventures planned ahead.
One other thing to consider is that Disney comes up with new ideas all the time, and they never throw them away, they just put them aside for another day. Over the years, many old ideas have been resurrected in one form or another, and it is possible that this could be the case again here. How so? Well, during the Q&A session with the stockholder last week the topic of building the long-in-development 3rd park at the Disneyland Resort came up, only to be squashed like a bug when they said they were not currently seeking to build a 3rd park in California at this time. (Note: they didn’t say NEVER… just not right now… and I may have more on just why this was said at a later date…)
According to the last rumors I had heard about the concept for the proposed 3rd Disneyland park, the overall theme of the park was to be all about ‘Heroes and Adventure”, featuring a number of heavily themed worlds to explore. The rumored concepts included building worlds from Star Wars, various Marvel based themes and even possibly importing the attractions under construction from Avatar into the project. In a way, the direction of this 3rd park sounds quite a bit like the direction where Disney may be trying to evolve Florida’s Studios park into as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of “Heroes and Adventure” themed concept put to use.
This will take time… and while I don’t think we’ll see any kind of name change take place until Fall 2016 at the earliest, there may be one more interesting kink to work out before they can finalize their plans. This would revolve around the “M” problem… as Disney really wants to have the freedom to use the Marvel characters in Florida, and this means they will have to come to some kind of terms with Universal over their use.
According to what I’ve heard over the years, while Universal’s use of the Marvel characters at Islands of Adventure does not have a hard expiration date, it does have renewal dates built in at 10 year intervals where the cost of keeping the Marvel characters at IOA does increase, and where the terms of the deal can be renegotiated in the interest of both parties. While Islands of Adventure opened in 1999, the deal would have been signed many months before… estimated to be somewhere in the range of 12-18 months before the park opened. In other words, Disney and Universal are going to be meeting to discuss the terms of the next renewal in the 2017/2018 timeframe. Looking back, Disney has also been able to negotiate some incredible deals to regain almost all of the Marvel character rights that had previously been scattered out to the various studios. The only characters still outside the realm of Disney / Marvel’s feature film control to date are the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises which are being held in a death grip by Fox, but once again Disney put their magic-mojo to work and reached an epic deal with Sony that will allow them to bring Spiderman back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while still keeping Sony involved in the franchise.
I’ve said this before many times, but a similar style Win / Win deal can easily be established between Universal and Disney that would allow Universal to continue to keep the Marvel Super Hero Island at IOA intact for at least another decade or more at a reasonable rate, while allowing Disney free reign to begin using more of the characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the Walt Disney World parks. Allowing Universal to keep their attractions really wont hurt their efforts at the Disney parks in my opinion, as most of the characters put to use in the attractions at Universal are Spider-Man (Sony), X-Men and Fantastic Four (Fox) related anyway, with the sole exception being the use of the Incredible Hulk as the theme for the roller coaster, where Disney could let them keep it, or ask them to repaint it and theme it to another character, such as the Silver Surfer (which was the original intended theme anyway…)
It is also a good idea to keep in mind that while Universal and Disney are in competition on the theme park and movie studio side of things, Universal is owned by Comcast, who also has a very good reason to try and keep a good relationship between Disney as a key content provider for programming (ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel, etc…) used in the Comcast cable empire.
If a Win / Win style deal can be made, I’d count on seeing a Marvel presence at the Disney Studios park (whatever they choose to call it) as part of the transformation and new brand.
