Upcoming Announcement?

[BrianLo]

For DCA Pandora? I mean, new CEO and a new one-year delay in closing Mike & Sully seem to indicate ... something's happening. A couple of other points:

• The Avatar franchise's global box office numbers: $2.9B | $2.3B | $1.5B
• Zootopia's global box office numbers: $1.0B | $1.9B
• Disney doesn't own the Avatar sequels, so presumably an in park-future with those would entail licensing costs

I suspect several ideas are being considered. Jim Shull makes a good case for Zootopia here.

We already have a clear explanation for the Monsters delay related to the EGW project. Disney just reaffirmed they are building Avatar days ago. Disney owns Avatar… I think your wires are a little crossed there?

I’m curious if this is your speculation or based on something, like Villains was? Not trying to challenge you, but the logic behind what you just said is rather odd; so I wanted to see if there was something substantively linked as @wdwmagic certainly doesn’t appear to be talking off the cuff.

 

[ProjectXBlog]

We already have a clear explanation for the Monsters delay related to the EGW project. Disney just reaffirmed they are building Avatar days ago. Disney owns Avatar… I think your wires are a little crossed there?

I’m curious if this is your speculation or based on something, like Villains was? Not trying to challenge you, but the logic behind what you just said is rather odd; so I wanted to see if there was something substantively linked as @wdwmagic certainly doesn’t appear to be talking off the cuff.

I’m just chiming in here to clarify that Disney does not completely own the Avatar franchise. Avatar as an IP is owned by James Cameron & Lightstorm, and Disney mainly has the distribution rights that they inherited after the Fox buyout. Disney also has a licensing deal with Cameron for the theme parks, but the agreement they’ve had in place since 2011 seems to be more complex than most licensing deals.

 

[BrianLo]

This is such an odd rumour by contrast to villains. How we can go from Disney reaffirming the project to the media to the internet deciding it is cancelled?

I tried to figure out what the heck the primary source was and it seems to have been Brickey openly speculating and then saying he is only speculating.

There is some sensibility towards it, Zootopia would have made somewhat more logistical sense in that backlot corner. Pandora would work in Disneyland forward with space to breath. But I’d be pretty surprised if they bailed on Avatar entirely when they just reaffirmed it is coming, to there and isn’t delayed.