Ahmet Zappa In Talks To Pen The Screenplay
Disney loves synergy, and with “The Pirates of the Caribbean” now aiming to top out at six films and with movies based on “The Haunted Mansion” (directed by Guillermo del Toro), “The Magic Kingdom” (directed by Jon Favreau) and possibly even “The Enchanted Tiki Room,” the round-eared studio is now digging up concepts that didn’t even get made to turn into a movie.
Disney is in discussions with Ahmet Zappa (who is also writing ‘Tiki Room’) to pen “The Museum of the Weird,” based on an idea for an attraction that cropped up in the 1960s but never broke ground. At the time, theme-park creators Rolly Crump and Claude Coats came up with the idea of a museum that would serve as an addition to The Haunted Mansion, and feature “ghostly organists, magic carts, talking chairs and other surreal exhibits.” The idea for the movie is to take those supernatural ephemera and create a big family adventure film not unlike “Night at the Museum” or “The Mummy.”
This one is likely a long way off as Disney wants an attraction to follow on the heels of a film, and development is still in early stages. Can’t say we really care about the film, but no studio out there has done a better job multi-quandrant blockbusters lately than Disney. They seem to have refined the practice down to a science and their deep pockets have certainly drawn some big names through their doors. Zappa himself is on a bit of a hot streak of late, coming up with the story for “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” which is being directed by Peter Hedges and he’s also got the hotly buzzed “Monster Relocation Program” in development, so you can expect some strong directors to start sniffing around this one.