Not enough people realize how influential the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was. The idea of turning a theme park ride into a working film series seemed impossible. Once the film became a rousing success, every studio in Tinseltown understood that they could make a movie out of any brand they wanted. Disney, ever the pragmatist, just kept repeating the formula with theme park rides to middling success with both the Haunted Mansion and Tomorrowland. After both films flopped, it seemed like Disney discovered that they caught lightning in a bottle with Pirates and stopped trying to replicate the magic.
Well, that was then, and this is now. In addition to a new Haunted Mansion film in pre-production, Disney is trying to turn their Epcot mascot Figment into a full-fledged movie character. According to Deadline, Seth Rogen's film studio Point Grey is going to helm the project and turn Disney's Figment into a reality.
A Disney film is in the works featuring the character Figment, a small purple dragon who serves as the mascot of Epcot's Imagination Pavilion in Orlando. The feature hails from Seth Rogen's Point Grey with Pokémon Detective Pikachu's Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit set to write, Deadline has learned. Figment was created by Walt Disney Imagineers Tony Baxter and Steve Kirk, among other collaborators, in 1983, the same year it made its debut in the Epcot ride Journey Into Imagination. Figment is the embodiment of the imagining process— a figment of your imagination.
