Guillermo del Toro, below, the director who had prepared to direct “The Hobbit” for the better part of a year and recently dropped out of that project, has been tapped to turn Disney’s Haunted Mansion theme park ride into a 3-D live-action pic, according to Variety.com.
This sounds familiar.
Although “Pirates of the Caribbean,” based on the Disney ride of the same name, has been box-office gold, with a fourth film in the works, “The Haunted Mansion” movie that came out in 2003 starring Eddie Murphy, didn’t fare as well. If Disney is eyeballing its theme parks for movie inspiration, here are some suggestions that might work out better than “Mansion.”
“Monorail”: Existential drama in which a group of passengers talk and talk while caught in an endless loop.
“It’s a Small World”: Waterboarding isn’t the only soggy way to get folks to spill the beans. A plotline might turn on the boat ride and its signature tune as instruments of torture.
“Mad Tea Party”: Suggested trailer: “If ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in 3-D didn’t make you hurl, this one will!”
“Hall of Presidents”: An audio-animatronic political thriller that could empower a studio to ditch those messy human actors.
