Say you’re the Walt Disney Company. And you’re still looking for ways to cash in on your 2003 hit film, “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.”
The studio side of the Mouse House already has two sequels to this Gore Verbinski movie in pre-production (Over 7,000 would-be extras turned out for a “Pirates” casting call last month in LA. Shooting on these “Pirates” follow-up films is supposed to get underway sometime in late February). Buena Vista Home Entertainment has just issued the “Lost Disc” special edition of the “Pirates” DVD. Disney’s even arranged to have some cool “Pirates” action figures produced. Not to mention some pretty amazing reproductions of props from this popular motion picture.
But that’s not enough for Mickey. Even with all this stuff already on the table, the Mouse is still looking for ways to extend the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. Which is why — for the past year or so — the Imagineers have quietly been working on a …
… “Pirates of the Caribbean” themed water park.
According to those who are familiar with this project, the basic idea is to create the next generation of water park for the Disney resorts. Something that will take the sort of storytelling that WDI has done with “Typhoon Lagoon” and “Blizzard Beach” and move it to a whole new level.
What the Imagineers are trying to do here is take elements from the Gore Verbinski film …
… and combine them with images from the popular “Pirates” theme park attraction …
… to create something wholely new. A Disney water park unlike anything that the Imagineers have produced to date. A place that will have some real energy and some edge.
Here. Take a peek at the “proof of concept” painting for this proposed project.
Looks pretty snazzy, don’t you think?
Now the downside of this whole situation: The very kind person who leaked this concept art to JimHillMedia.com made it very clear that the “Pirates of the Caribbean Water Adventure” park was still very much in its blue sky phase. Meaning that Disney Company management hasn’t actually committed to the construction of this project yet.
More importantly, the Mouse has yet to indicate where exactly this “Pirates” water park is going to get built. Okay. Sure. Walt Disney World would seem be the obvious choice. But let’s remember that — ‘way back when the Disney Company was talking about building a third theme park in Anaheim (On top of the old strawberry fields, now the current parking lot for Disneyland cast members) — one of the ideas that was being knocked around was a water park. Then — of course — there’s that large parcel of vacant land right across from the entrance of Hong Kong Disneyland.
So — as you can see — it’s not all that easy to predict where the “Pirates of the Caribbean Water Adventure” park will pop up first.
UPDATE: Just this morning, it’s come to our attention that this “Pirates of the Caribbean” Water Adventure concept painting appears to be the work of Scott Sherman. While I can assure you that it wasn’t Mr. Sherman himself who provided JHM with the image used in today’s article, it is nice to be able to credit the artist who actually created this piece. If you’d like to learn more about Scott and the other projects he’s worked on, you can do so by following this link.
Your thoughts?