A number of theme park rides, along with board games, are currently in various stages of development as feature films.
Even the entire Magic Kingdom itself is going to be a movie, directed by Jon Faverau (Iron Man, Cowboys and Aliens), from a script by Michael Chabon (Spider-Man 2), and Guillermo Del Toro’s also working on his own version of The Haunted Mansion, which could be pretty cool, me thinks.
The Matterhorn is one of the Disney rides in development to be made, and Ehren Kruger, who was one of the writers on Transformers 2 and 3 (along with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman), and who penned Arlington Road along with the American version of The Ring, will be adapting the ride for the big screen.
According to Collider, the nascent story of The Matterhorn is thus: “Five young adventure seekers – an action sports guy, travel guide, cartographer, archeologist and escape artist – venture into the Alps for mysterious reasons and face Yetis that guard a secret.”
The Hollywood Reporter also tells us that first timer Brian Beletic will be helming the film, and that the project will be “grounded in hardcore adventuring” and extreme sports.
Funny enough, when I interviewed Kruger some years back for Creative Screenwriting, he told me he initially wanted to design theme park rides before deciding to become a writer.
“What I really wanted to do as a kid was to design and build roller-coasters. I took a few architecture and engineering courses, and there was too much math involved! So as a second choice (laughs), I had a great love for movies and I decided that screenwriting had a lot of the same qualities in terms of engineering an emotional response from an audience,” he said.
“Sometimes you try things not sure what kind of response it will provoke, other times there’s a specific response you’re trying to achieve. That in its own way is an exercise in emotional manipulation as much as putting a big hill here, a loop-de-loop here, and a tunnel here.”
