Though a lot of Jon Favreau’s time at the moment is spent either acting or producing other projects, he is still gearing up to make musical adaptation Jersey Boy****s. But what of his other big project, the theme-park-comes-to-live adventure Magic Kingdom? Things have been quiet on that front, and now Favreau has explained that’s because he’s been working hard behind the scenes with Disney and Pixar.
Tracked down at a party for NBC at the television critics’ association summer tour, where he’s promoting post-apocalyptic drama revolution, the director chatted to Crave about the development process for the movie.
“What we’ve been doing is writing a script, going up to Pixar, meeting with the brain trust, coming back down, bringing on artists, story editors and putting it together as though it were an animated film so that by the time we actually film it, we’ll have a rock solid story,” Favreau says. “I don’t want to rush anything. I want this thing to be perfect. I want it to be one shot one kill, like a sniper. I want to make sure this movie’s right in the crosshairs that we can really knock it out of the park so to speak.”
Though the Emeryville ‘toon whizzes won’t be directly involved in getting it to the screen – it’ll be a live action adventure, albeit one stuffed with visual effects – John Lasseter has clearly been trying to have the teams work together on this one. “Taking a tour of Pixar is special enough but to sit in a room and pitch to those people and hear their ideas, it’s very, very exciting,” says Favreau. “I want to learn as much as I can from them and hopefully have their success in storytelling that they do as well by learning from their process. I really want to hold this film to a very high standard so I’m not rushing it but it’s coming along very well.”
He even gave a hint to what the plot would be. “It’s going to be a family in the park. It’s an alternate reality version of the park that they get launched into. So much of it is just how it weaves together as a tapestry and what the visuals look like in creating this rich world. It’s informed by everything that I remember and know about the park from going there since I was a small child.”