Ryan Reynolds and Disney Developing Movie About Beloved Park Attraction
Ryan Reynolds' collaboration with Disney is only continuing. On Thursday, it was announced that the Deadpool 3 star will be producing a film based on the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, a group included in Disney's various parks. The live-action film will be written by Qui Nguyen, who co-wrote Disney's hit Raya and the Last Dragon and is the writer and co-director of the studio's upcoming animated movie Strange World. The Society of Explorers and Adventurers film will be produced by Reynolds' Maximum Effort banner, with the goal of hopefully launching a franchise.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Nguyen's take on Society of Explorers and Adventurers will be a present-day take on the SEA mythology, with a new supernatural element and new characters not in the original lore.
What is Disney's Society of Explorers and Adventurers?
The SEA are an organization baked into the lore of many Disney parks, originating from the Fortress Explorations attraction at Tokyo DisneySea. The group consists of a number of adventurers and explorers, with Easter eggs and references to them included in rides like Jungle Cruise, Tower of Terror, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and the Mystic Manor attraction at Hong Kong Disneyland.
The group has a number of fictional members, including Harrison Hightower III, Lord Henry Mystic, Barnabas T. Bullion, Mary Oceaneer, and Dr. Albert Falls.
Is there a Society of Explorers and Adventurers television show?
The caveat here is that Reynolds and Nguyen's Society of Explorers and Adventurers project will be different from the upcoming Disney+ series also inspired by the group, executive produced by For All Mankind's executive producer and writer Ron Moore. Moore's project will be set in the Magic Kingdom Universe, an alternate-reality concept where all the themed lands and characters of the Disney parks and classic films actually exist in another reality.
"I decided to go there mostly because my childhood was built around a lot of things that were Disney. I am a huge fan and aficionado of the Disneyland park in Anaheim to the point where I would go there by myself periodically and ride the rides," Moore said of his overall deal with The Walt Disney Company's 20th Television while speaking with THR. "The opportunity for me to get to work on a lot of the classic IP that Disney has and things in their library that meant so much to me as a child growing up and that I have shared with my children ultimately was just something I couldn't pass up."
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