The latest Disney theme park ride getting a big-screen adaptation is Tower of Terror, the haunted Hollywood hotel/elevator ride. Collider reports that Scarlett Johansson has her next Disney project (post-Black Widow, above) all lined up: She’s on board to star in and produce the Tower of Terror film. Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4, Inside Out) is writing the script.
There already was a Tower of Terror movie—a 1997 TV movie starring Kirsten Dunst and Steve Gutenberg, and written and directed by D.J. MacHale. This one, presumably, will be a little higher-budget, and in keeping with Disney’s other theme-park-ride movies, including the Pirates of the Caribbean films and Jungle Cruise. In 2015, the studio was looking for a writer to turn a John August (Big Fish) treatment into a screenplay, to be produced by August and Jim Whitaker. But it’s unclear if the current project is working from that same treatment, the premise of which was reportedly “Five people in a posh hotel take an elevator and disappear after it is hit by lightning.”
This tracks with the Tower of Terror ride description:
Step uneasily inside the infamous Hollywood Tower Hotel and find a dusty lobby frozen in time. Even the subdued hotel staff seems strangely out of another era.
Suddenly a television set springs to life and Rod Serling welcomes you on a journey into the Twilight Zone. He reveals that on a gloomy Halloween night in 1939, some hotel patrons were riding the elevator when a violent storm struck the building… and they were never seen again. The hotel closed down and has stood empty ever since.
Going Up?
Enter the rickety, elevator-style lift, strap yourself in and prepare to discover what lies beyond the darkest corner of your imagination.
Shriek in terror as you’re suddenly propelled up and down the abandoned shaft—unexpectedly dropping and rising—as you hear the sound of cables snapping and metal clanging overhead.
Will you make it back to the real world… or will you become a permanent resident of the Twilight Zone?
Will they franchise this by inventing an endless series of haunted hotels? Only time will tell. No production timeline or further casting has been announced.
