Movies have been inextricably linked to theme parks since their near-simultaneous invention. A year before George Méliès showed moviegoers the moon, inventor Frederic Thompson built it in a Buffalo fairgrounds and charged 50-cents a trip on the world’s first electrically operated dark ride. When Walt Disney wanted his fantasyland put to paper, he enlisted animators and technicians already working at the studio. Universal followed suit when expanding its backlot tour into an international chain of resort destinations – it’s no coincidence that Steven Spielberg serves as executive creative consultant for the Florida park to this day.
The stars, the suspense, the special effects – they’re all complementary from one storytelling form to the other. What’s surprising in the modern arms race for recognizable IP is just how many major film franchises are currently unrepresented around the world. The following six have been chosen for as much for their egregious absence as the likelihood of their eventual arrival.
Mission: Impossible
The first entry on this list is a bit of a cheat considering there exist two Mission: Impossible attractions on distant drawing boards.
Ever since Cedar Fair bought the Paramount Parks subsidiary in 2006, Paramount Pictures has been itching to get back in the themed entertainment game. The decade following is littered with false-starts and dead-end press releases. In 2008, Paramount Movie Park Korea was announced for Incheon, South Korea, with a planned opening in 2011. As of 2021, construction hasn’t started and may be delayed even further due to the coronavirus pandemic. Another new park was announced for Alhama de Murcia, Spain, the year Movie Park Korea was originally supposed to open. As of 2016, the untouched site was rezoned for agricultural use. “London Paramount Entertainment Resort” was supposed to welcome its first guests in 2019. The renamed “London Resort” will only feature certain Paramount properties and may or may not open in 2024, depending on if the Natural England group deems the Swanscombe insect life worth protecting.
If everything goes according to the current plan, Paramount will finally be lighting Mission: Impossible’s fuse in Kent and Korea. Not much is known about these attractions beyond concept art for the UK park. As drawn, the ride, possibly titled M:I Training Center, borrows the Universal SCOOP template, with a trainee vehicle swerving into a dead-end of exploding industry and one Ethan Hunt, airborne.
But for a 25-year-old film franchise, not to mention an additional 30 years on TV prior, it’s almost underwhelming. The Paramount Parks never found a place for it, despite posters around their respective Action Zones. Pretty quickly, at least by the second film’s cliffhanger opening, Mission: Impossible became synonymous with insurance-straining stunts. The scale would have to wait for later installments, but the ingredients have always been there for a live show dedicated to defying death five times daily. Even if the theme park stunt show is a dying art, there’s no franchise better suited to it, and Universal’s Bourne Stuntacular offers tantalizingly high-tech possibilities for the future. Speaking of…
James Bond
Rumors that the Bourne Stuntacular started as a proposal for another spy-fi stunt show bearing the monogram J.B. were so widespread that some outlets reported the IP as an open secret. It made sense and makes a little more by the year – according to CNBC, James Bond is the highest-grossing franchise in film history without a major theme park presence.
Universal first made a play at the franchise in the Timothy Dalton era, commissioning the Landmark Entertainment Group of Ghostbusters Spooktacular fame to work on a pitch ahead of Universal Studios Florida. The resulting 007 James Bond Action Spectacular would’ve required a theater no shorter than a volcano lair and no narrower than a submarine parked sideways. The concept art and treatment was all for naught.
Landmark won the long game, though, with the 1998 simulator film, James Bond 007: License to Thrill. It played at seven motion theaters around the world, five at Paramount Parks. By 2002, it was gone. That year provides a hint as to the complicated nature of the license.
License to Thrill proudly featured appearances from Dame Judi Dench and Desmond Llewelyn as M and Q, respectively, putting it line with the contemporary films. Llewelyn, as close as the franchise ever had to continuity, passed away in 1999. In 2002, with the release of Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan was out as James Bond. With a 00-sized reset on the horizon, where would that leave an ancillary theme park attraction?
Landmark’s website still refers to James Bond as “one of the hardest intellectual property licenses to get in the world.” The company in charge of the superspy, Eon Productions, has been family-run since Dr. No. The 24 sequels and counting only prove the method in the madness – despite all the infamous product placement, Bond is a very hard man to buy. A theme park attraction would have to thread a very fine needle to get the greenlight. Who’s playing Bond in it? If there’s answer, there’s also an expiration date. Foregoing a famous face – License to Thrill sidestepped one by putting riders inside 007’s head – still leaves the intangibles of MI6. Which M? Which Q? Which supervillain? And how does it all translate into a 4-minute experience?
James Bond will return, it’s just a matter of how.
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fantasia occupies a similar IP purgatory, sitting just a few rungs lower on the same CNBC list as Bond. It’s one of the last white whales in the increasingly sparse licensing sea. Unlike MI6 or a Mission: Impossible, though, it offers breathtaking scale. Not just an attraction, not necessarily even a land. It’s the rare franchise that could, should anyone be so ambitious, support its own park.
Middle-earth has been whispered around Universal Orlando Resort long before Fellowship of the Ring won its four Oscars. The first genuine smoke to that particular fire came in 2010, when it started showing up in guest surveys. The rumors didn’t much matter – Tolkien protected his work fervently and his estate honored that. Anything before the surveys was a pipe dream, anything after, wishful thinking. The loophole came with a 2012 lawsuit, in which the Tolkien estate claimed New Line Cinema, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., was licensing out rights it didn’t have in the first place. That includes slot machines, video games, and, at least hypothetically, theme park attractions.
The suit was voluntarily dismissed in 2017 by all parties involved and the theme park rumor mill churned into overdrive. With Warner Bros. already on speed-dial for Harry Potter expansions, could Universal finally land the greatest fantasy franchise of them all?
It’s all still guesswork and alleged insiders for now, with some targeting Toon Lagoon as the eventual home of ents, wargs, and the resort’s second gold-hoarding dragon. Wherever Middle-earth does land, if it ever does, the possibilities are almost too vast to imagine. A recreated Hobbiton like the original set, still open four tours in New Zealand? A bow-and-arrow shooter through the Battle of Helm’s Deep? An orc restaurant where meat is always on the menu? There are six films, an upcoming TV show, and, depending on what the rights entail, libraries of Tolkien writings left untapped. Once The Lord of the Rings finally becomes real, there won’t be much left under the sun to adapt.
Star Trek
Looking above and beyond the sun, the only other white whale of comparable size is Star Trek. For better or worse, it does have a track record.
Star Trek: Operation Enterprise is currently launching guests to the final frontier at Movie Park Germany. The queue wraps its way around a recreation of the USS Enterprise bridge, circa The Next Generation. That should disqualify it from this list along with fellow runners-up Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but the crucial difference is scale. The greater Trek franchise accounts for 13 films, 12 shows, and a Barnes & Nobles worth of printed media. One roller coaster, no matter how elaborate the line, just can’t cut it.
Star Trek: The Experience remains the obvious gold standard. Built on the unfortunate side of the Vegas-is-for-families boom, the Experience turned a Hilton ballroom into a shrine. The Deep Space Nine Promenade was replicated down to the Romulan Ale. Costumed aliens and crew alike mingled at Quark’s Bar and hung around the gift shops. By the end of its run, two major attractions were included with admission – Klingon Encounter, warping visitors directly into Next Generation, and Borg Invasion, doing the same for Voyager. The Experience was originally designed to fit within a parked replica of the Enterprise, but leveler budgets prevailed. Still, there’s never been anything like it, before or since.
Star Trek is on a verge it hasn’t been close to since the 1990s, then with three shows airing near-simultaneously and films releasing alongside them. Today, Discvoery, Picard, and Lower Decks are ongoing, with two other series in the works and multiple big screen voyages languishing in development. The iron is hot, possibly as hot as it ever gets for a legacy franchise like this, though Paramount parent Viacom is eying an upcoming Trek cartoon as a direct gateway to theme parks.
A futuristic cityscape or indoor space station celebrating the franchise’s timeless spirit of exploration would extend its reach beyond streaming services and provide an underserved environment for whichever park makes the deal. As with Lord of the Rings, Universal is the popular guess, specifically for Epic Universe. But with construction on the horizon and no lucrative announcements made, it’s a shot in the dark at best. Given that the Trek cartoon in question will be airing on Nickelodeon, the franchise is just as likely to make a smaller splash at one of those parks.
The Matrix
This is the dark horse candidate. The Matrix endures more as an idea, a shorthand piece of pop psychology, than a franchise. Memory may paint the contentious second and third films as misfires, but the trilogy earned $1.6 billion around the world. Even without a big screen follow-up in 18 years, the mythology has weight. Blue pills and red pills still mean something. But what would a Matrix attraction even look like?
Since the first film changed cinema in 1999, despite Warner Bros. occasional efforts, the franchise has been shepherded solely by the Wachowski Sisters. Any theme park adaptation would require their vision and oversight. It could only push the medium. The easiest way out is some kind of coaster that starts by waking riders out of the simulation and, once self-aware and superpowered, launches them back inside to corkscrew around an army of agents. Simple and effective, maybe, but underwhelming given the source material.
The technological advent that really makes this a tantalizing possibility is projection mapping. The iconic binary rain, a special effect once reserved for post-production, could now fill a room and trace everything in it. That means a perfectly ordinary set could dissolve into its base code in real-time, right before disbelieving eyes. It’s only one trick, and not the toughest required – who knows what bullet time would or even could look like in entertainment design – but it’s an exciting start. Early rumors about The Matrix: Resurrections, this winter’s belated sequel, hinted at a metatextual slant in the plot, possibly taking place in a world where the movie already exists. Whether or not that turns out to be true, it provides equally fertile ground for a theme park experience, where the world can change dramatically for a few minutes and go back to normal as if nothing ever happened.
Recent rumblings from Warner Bros. suggest the studio is already toying with the idea after the success of Warner Brothers World Abu Dhabi. Any attraction that comes of it will have to settle for being the world’s second Keanu Reeves-themed ride, after the John Wick coaster opens in Motiongate Dubai.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Once upon a time, Sonic the Hedgehog was the coolest character in the world. The Sega Genesis outsold the Super Nintendo two-to-one during the Christmas of the original game’s release. The so-called “Blue Blur” wagged a disobedient finger over all of Sega’s arcades, serving as a cross-cultural ambassador in countries like Taiwan, Australia, China, and the United Kingdom. For the first and arguably last time, it seemed like Super Mario might be left in the dust.
Super Sega World, however, will not be anchoring Universal’s Epic Universe. Nintendo and its golden plumber won the long game. On March 31st, 2001, Sega ceased production of the Dreamcast, ending its run as a console manufacturer. Not long after, the former archrivals shook hands. Sega would produce games for other consoles, including Nintendo’s. Sonic and Mario have been workplace friends ever since. What qualifies the hedgehog for this list is his 2020 blockbuster, the third highest-grossing release in the United States and sixth around the world.
According to recent reports out of Japan, that box office has inspired Sega’s return to themed entertainment. An entire Sonic theme park may be headed to the UK sooner rather than later. Even if it everything does go according to plan, that could and should only be the beginning. As for the movies, a sequel is already in the can. As for the games, Sonic is still among the most recognizable video game characters in the history of the medium, and every game includes its own array of exotic locales and gameplay possibilities.
The most famous Green Hill Zone, reimagined as a sleepy little town in Montana for the big screen, is an obvious choice for a base environment. The loop-de-loops and checkerboard mountains are iconic, but may be a little too close for comfort to Super Nintendo World. Not to worry – even Sonic’s forested zones vary by miles. Mushroom Hill Zone, glimpsed briefly at the end of the movie, would suffice. A techno wasteland inspired by Dr. Robotnik’s insidious inventions covers a different extreme. For pure eye candy, nothing beats a casino zone at night. Alton Towers briefly operated a standard spinning coaster as Sonic Spinball, but that’s just the tip of the hypothetical iceberg. More complex, multi-launch systems could match speed with story. Every other Robotnik boss fight could pass for a flat ride – the final battle of the original game is pretty much Sonic avoiding an out-of-control drop tower.
With Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on track to release next year and a video game reimagining due soon after, the Blue Blur is on track for his biggest comeback since the 1990s. Hopefully it won’t be long before fans can celebrate in person, at spin-dash speeds
