LOS ANGELES — When James Cameron’s “Avatar” hit
theaters in 2009, many moviegoers were so dazzled by the lush, 3-D world
of the alien moon Pandora that they wanted to step right inside. Now
the Walt Disney Co. is aiming to offer that kind of experience to its
theme park patrons.
Disney’s Imagineers are
working with Cameron, his producing partner Jon Landau and studio 20th
Century Fox to bring the fantasy world from “Avatar” to its theme parks,
beginning with a multi-attraction themed land at the Animal Kingdom
park in Orlando, Fla.
Though the attraction is
still in its earliest development stages, Cameron has clear ideas about
what he’d like any Pandoran land to include, which he shared in an
interview on Tuesday.
“I definitely want to do a
flight attraction of some kind,” the director said, citing the “Soarin’
Over California” flying ride at Disney’s California Adventure Park in
Anaheim as a personal favorite. “Flying is a big part of the movie. One
of the things people liked the most at test screenings was going up into
the floating mountains in the flying sequences. We may have banshees,
Leonopteryxes, maybe some other flying creatures that don’t make their
appearance until the second and third films.”
Disney’s
Imagineers will also be tasked with bringing Na’vi culture and the
natural world of Pandora to life, along with creating “a general sense
of the future,” Cameron said.
“It all needs to be
one fabric,” he said. “As long as it’s thematically consistent, as long
as it looks and feels and smells the way you imagine it, then we’ve
succeeded.”
The hugely successful Wizarding World
of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Orlando, which depicts the universe
created in J.K. Rowling’s books and Warner Bros.’ films right down to
the mugs of butter beer for sale at concessions, provides something of a
template for a theme park attraction that is faithful to its source
material.
As Rowling was with the Potter theme park, “Avatar’s” creators say they will be hands-on in developing the attraction.
Groundbreaking
for the “Avatar” land at Animal Kingdom is planned for 2013, but the
attraction isn’t scheduled to open until 2016, after the premieres of
the “Avatar” sequels in 2014 and 2015.
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