Brad Bird's Tomorrowland is the big new mystery on the block in Hollywood. Originally titled 1952, the project is a collaboration between the Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol director and Damon Lindelof, but all details about the plot have been kept under wraps. The history that has been going around is that Lindelof went into Disney one day and was given a banker's box with the label "1952" on it. After looking through the box he was suddenly inspired. But what is the story that he was inspired to come up with?
Walt Disney historian Jim Hill says that he has a theory and posted it on his official website. And it all begins with this photograph that Bird posted on his Twitter feed a couple weeks back:
After Bird released that shot, the official Disney fan club, D23, analyzed the box and its contents and came up with a detailed list of 12 different objects that can be seen. It was from this box that Hill developed his theory, and it's about how the US government once tried to use Walt Disney and his family-friendly ways to tell the populations of both America and the world that aliens and unidentified flying objects actually exist. Crazy? Just wait for the details.
Hill's story ties in with a tale that former Imagineer Ward Kimball "loved to tell as its jumping-off point." It all began with Disneyland TV series , which aired an episode called Man in Space. The show was so popular - finding 42 million viewers - that not only is it said it inspired the US to enter the space race, it led government officials to approach Disney about making a "UFO Picture." According to the story, the members of the government believed that Disney's name, reputation, and tone delivering such devastating news would prevent panic and chaos. Eventually the project was cancelled when the government backed out of using real UFO footage.
It's a very cool idea and a certainly a story I would love to see play out on the big screen, but would this mean that George Clooney, who was previously announced to star, would be playing Walt Disney? If that's the case, will it be weird that Tom Hanks will also be playing the legendary studio head in the upcoming Mary Poppins drama Saving Mr. Banks? A very interesting theory at the very least.
