Disney has tried twice to turn one of the best Disneyland attractions , The Haunted Mansion, into a successful film. While I would argue that the first Haunted Mansion movie isn’t as bad as most people think, and the more recent Haunted Mansion movie is actually really good, it can’t be overlooked that financially both movies were failures. So, maybe the solution is to bring the Haunted Mansion to TV, and more specifically, into the world of animation.
I recently had a chance to sit down with director Shannon Tindle, and we spent most of our time discussing his new film, Ultraman: Rising (which is excellent). However, I also had to talk to him about a project he never made, an animated series based on Haunted Mansion . As CinemaBlend’s theme park expert , I found a kindred spirit in Tindle.
He told me about his love for one of Walt Disney ’s original Nine Old Men animators, Mark Davis, who became one of the primary designers of the Disneyland and Disney World attraction, and how he tried to fine-tune his pitch in more ways than one to get Disney to bite. He explained..
. I'm a huge fan. I love Mark Davis.
I love his work and his transition from one of the Nine Old Men in animation to working at WED. So yeah, it was one of those things where I was on an overall at Disney and I said, 'I've got an idea for Haunted Mansion.' And so we developed it first as an ongoing series, then we pivoted and said, what if we did it as a mini-series? The teaser is out there somewhere.
Th.
