Theme-park movie successes

Whoever would have thought that a feature-length film based on a fairground ride would prove to be so profitable?

Surely no one could have predicted the success enjoyed by Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, whichtook the worldwide box office by storm.

Two more films have been released in the series, with a fourth due in 2011, all of which has made Disney billions of dollars in profit.

Given the popularity of the films, it was only a matter of time before Disney started taking a look at the money-making potential of some of their other theme-park rides.

Attracting the attention of two heavyweight directors, Jon Favreau and Guillermo del Toro, it looks like the next Disney attractions to get the Hollywood treatment are Magic Kingdom and The Haunted Mansion. But Disney has decided to go one better than that.

Taking it even further, if a report in the Los Angeles Times is to be believed, the child-friendly corporation has found a scriptwriter to begin work on a movie based on a Disney attraction that was never made.

A script based on The Museum of the Weird (we like the sound of it already), which was supposedly conceived in the 1960s but never saw the light of day, will apparently be written by Ahmet Zappa - the son of the musician Frank Zappa.