American interest in other cultures usually tends to be pretty shallow-- for us Germany equals schnitzel, China equal dragon puppets, so on and so forth. But even by that standard our knowledge of Pacific culture is pretty pathetic, boiling down to tiki bars and that episode of The Brady Bunch where they get cursed by an ancient idol. Sadly, the latest project over at Disney probably isn't going to help matters. According to THR, the studio is in early negotiations to pick up Tiki, a spec script from writers Ahmet Zappa and Michael Wilson that may be loosely inspired by Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room attraction.
Disney denies any connection between the two, but given that the Tiki Room has been a popular feature of the park for decades now, that's probably at least part of the inspiration for picking up the project. Tiki takes place in Hawaii and incorporates the local culture of wooden masks and ghost stories, though there's no word on what the exact plot may be. Given that Tiki is a family adventure involving tiki culture and Hawaii there are obvious and probably unfair comparisons to The Brady Bunch to be made, but if they have a character cursed by a wooden idol, they deserve all the teasing them have coming to them.
