Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Bob Iger Confirms Star Wars Spin Off Movies - PLUS: A Great Idea For DLP Star Wars Land Grand Opening



We knew that Disney and Lucasfilm plan to produce Star Wars solo movies and in case you thought it was just a rumor Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed these Star Wars spin-off movies during the Walt Disney Company quarterly earning stockholders call. Iger said that right now there are "at least three" Star Wars spin off films in development, and they will be released alongside the main sequel trilogy. Up to this point, only two of these Star Wars projects have been confirmed.

The solo films they envision to do have previously been described as being origin stories. Although none of these spin off films have been officially announced yet, there have been rumors about movies that would include Han Solo, Yoda, and Boba Fett. Right now all we know about these solo movies is that Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are developing screenplays for whichever characters the studio has chosen to focus on.

Now, while we talk about Star Wars here is an idea that i had yesterday. As you know a Star Wars land is in the plans for Disneyland Paris, and will be located in the back of Discoveryland. No date has been announced yet and chances are that Star Wars 2 : The Adventure Continues will come years before DLP open a Star Wars Land but trust me, they will built it, sooner or later.

Anyway, when this Star Wars land will finally open at DLP no need to say that the park will do a major Grand Opening Celebration... As usual they intend to do Grand Openings in "big" and generally they are pretty good for finding good ideas, like the one they had for the WDS Tower of Terror opening, which was fantastic. But DLP Star Wars Land will be located behind Space Mountain, and for a big part will be hidden by it, meaning that they probably won't have a huge iconic building like they had with Tower of Terror.


Yesterday - don't ask me why - i was thinking again to Tim Delaney 1990's rendering showing a concept of Star Wars Land with Space Mountain dome looking like a "half" Star Wars Death Star, the artwork you can see above. And it's there that i had the "flash". I thought: "Hey, why wouldn't they transform Space Mountain in "Death Star" for the Star Wars Land Grand Opening,  just for that special evening?

And how would they do that, you ask? Well, in fact it could be done more easily than you think. Do you remember these huge canvas with a picture - for instance of a Main Street building - printed on them that the parks use generally to hide the scaffoldings when they repaint the building? Like the one below currently in place at Hong Kong Disneyland...


Now, think about having a canvas like this with a half Death Star printed on it, and the whole thing stretched over and all around Space Mountain dome structure. It would have to be in several parts joined together because of course there is no way to do it in one part, but they could attach them easily and the whole thing to Space Mountain metallic structures the one you can see on the picture below going from the top to the bottom of the dome, leaving just the antennas at the top out of the canvas. ( who could look like Death Star laser cannons... ).


It will give to the Grand Opening guests the illusion that the whole Discoveryland has been transformed in a Star Wars land - and not only part of it - and i'm pretty sure that technically speaking it can be done easily, and shouldn't cost that much in their "Grand Opening" budget. And who knows, they probably could even use the canvas surface to have some projections on it, like rebel / empire fighters flying and chasing one another... you know, this kind of scene below. Except that the Death Star being quite dark they probably would need to do laser projections.


The idea also would request to hide Space Mountain victorian cannon by another canvas just for the time of that special evening, but that's the easy part. The only thing is that it couldn't stay in place for a long time, probably 2-3 days not more, mainly for security reasons ( a strong wind could blow it all ) but just for the time of this special evening this is doable. And as they would need to install the whole thing little by little days before, DLP fans will probably enjoy it too.

A Star Wars Land opening at DLP is certainly not for tomorrow but i give the idea with pleasure to the folks of DLP marketing dept - Martina, if you read me... - hoping they'll keep it in a corner of their mind until this Grand Oepning day will come. And, hey, wouldn't it be great to see Tim Delaney's glorious rendering become reality, even for one night only?

Your thoughts?

Pictures: copyright Disney, Lucasfilm

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