Until now, Brad Bird’s upcoming live-action feature carried the nondescript title of 1952. Details about the plot have been kept tightly under wraps by Disney. The company has only just taken on J.J. Abrams as the director of the new Star Wars, but it’s already been using his ridiculous “mystery box” word-of-mouth strategy. They don’t really gain anything by withholding all this information, but the public will oft mistake what they don’t know as something worth knowing.
Anyway, the title is this: Tomorrowland. Which seems to strongly suggest, as this THR article which broke the news speculates, that the film will be based on the section of Disneyland with the same name. If that’s the case, it’ll probably be in keeping with the tradition of Pirates of the Carribean or The Haunted Mansion, using the name brand recognition as the jumping-off point for a story that’s basically its own thing (though probably with a nod or two to some feature of a theme park ride). Disney has actually attempted to get such a film off the ground before, but the project didn’t end up going anywhere. Bird and Damon Lindelof are on scripting duties for this new project, and George Clooney is set to star. It’s slated for release on December 19, 2014. Presumably, we’ll be told what it’s about sometime before then.
Meanwhile, there’s no word on progress with Bird’s incredible-sounding 1906 film, about the San Francisco earthquake. Pity.
