For nearly 40 years, Industrial Light & Magic has had a close relationship with Disney Parks. They have not only created visual effects for attractions themselves, from Captain EO and Star Tours in the 1980s to Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind in recent years, but have also worked on feature film adaptations of attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and Jungle Cruise (2021).
2023’s Haunted Mansion is another adaptation of a beloved attraction, which first premiered at Disneyland in 1969 and later at Walt Disney World in 1971. Director Justin Simien brought distinctly apt qualifications to the project, having worked as a Disneyland Resort cast member during his film school days at Chapman University. “Whenever I was in Disneyland, it was like being inside of a movie,” he tells ILM.com. “I would go on the rides over and over again, and I’d get chills in the same spots and catch my breath in the same places. I realized that this was cinema. It’s a theme park that’s physically happening around me, but the tools of the trade are the same.
“There’s production design, sound design, lighting, dialogue, character, and story,” Simien continues. “It sounds like something you’d say in a press interview, but it’s true – I remember going on The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean and thinking, ‘I need to figure out how to translate this to what I want to do as a filmmaker.’ Walt Disney and his artists brought us into these fantasy places. That’s the art. That’s the thing I needed to figure out. So for me, it all felt very complementary. Working at Disneyland was just another way of escaping into the movies.”