Tomorrowland

Plus Ultra, a group of inventors dedicated to finding other dreamers and inventors who shared the hope of shaping a better future, which eventually led them to discover a new dimension where Tomorrowland was founded.

Idea:

“When [Damon and I] were little, people had a very positive idea about the future, even though there were bad things going on in the world,” Bird said. “Even the 1964 World’s Fair happened during the Cold War. But there was a sense we could overcome them. And yet now we act like we’re passengers on a bus with no say in where it’s going, with no realization that we collectively write the future every day and can make it so much better than it otherwise would be.”

Development:

In 2010, Damon Lindelof began discussions with Walt Disney Studios about producing a modern science-fiction Disney film, with Tomorrowland as a basis. The project was approved by Walt Disney Pictures’ president of production, Sean Bailey in June 2011 with Lindelof signed on to write and produce a film with the working title of 1952. Lindelof asked Jeff Jensen – who had previously published material on Lindelof’s Lost television series – if he was interested in contributing to story elements. Jensen agreed and began to research the history of the Walt Disney Company, particularly Walt Disney’s fascination with futurism, scientific innovation and utopia, as well as his involvement with the 1964 New York World’s Fair and Disney’s unrealized concept for EPCOT. In May 2012, Brad Bird was hired as director. Bird’s story ideas and themes were influenced by the fading of cultural optimism that once defined society in the 1950s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s, stating that,

“When Damon and I were first talking about the project, we were wondering why people’s once-bright notions about the future gradually seemed to disappear”.

Originally, the film included overt references to Walt Disney’s involvement with Plus Ultra, the fictional organization founded by Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison – including the idea that Disneyland’s Tomorrowland was intended to be a cover-up for the real one developed by the group – however, the scenes and dialogue were omitted from the final cut of the film.

“People will argue about whether we told the proper story or not. People ask, ‘Why did you spend so much time in a car when you could have been in Tomorrowland?’ But the movie was always intended to be a road movie and its title seemed to suggest, to some people, that the whole movie was going to take place in Tomorrowland. We had a lot of ideas for Tomorrowland but just running around Tomorrowland is not a movie. There has to be a conflict. It has to be somewhat interesting. We set out to make a fable or a fairy tale about what happened to the positive view of the future and how can we get it back and pursue that idea. For better or worse, we did.”