A decade ago, Disney released a science fiction film with great fanfare, led by one of its favorite directors, Brad Bird, who had already been responsible for the enormous successes of Ratatouille and The Incredibles. This new film was presented as an ambitious project combining dimensional travel, futuristic utopia, and a love of theme parks. With a colossal budget, the film promised to revolutionize the genre. But despite all hopes, it ended up in oblivion. A look back at a cinematic adventure as brilliant as it is misunderstood.
Brad Bird's Mission Impossible
When Disney offered Brad Bird, Oscar-winning director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille, the choice between directing Star Wars: The Force Awakens or a secret original science fiction project, he opted for the latter. For Bird, it wasn't just about cinema, but about creating a new universe, a declaration of love to the imagination of Disney parks, to science and to the dream of tomorrow. This project is called Tomorrowland. The film follows Casey, a brilliant young girl who discovers a mysterious badge capable of taking her to a parallel futuristic world. Helped by a strange robot that looks like a little girl, she sets out to find the last person to have visited this parallel world, Frank Walker, a disillusioned inventor. Conceived as a A tribute to the visionary spirit of Walt Disney, Tomorrowland: The Hunt for Tomorrow combines high-tech gadgets, interdimensional travel, menacing robots, and utopian hope.
The shoot is ambitious. The teams at Industrial Light & Magic, known among other things for the visual effects of Star Wars, are mobilized to imagine the city and the universe of Tomorrowland. The studios are betting big: a budget of nearly $200 million, viral promotion around a life-size investigation game (The Optimist), and the promise of a new cinematic universe. Everything seemed to be in place for the film to become a new hit franchise, except that...
Even Brad Isn't Indestructible
But when it was released in May 2015, it was a cold shower. Despite spectacular visuals, the film was misunderstood by critics and shunned by audiences. It only grossed $209 million worldwide, barely enough to cover its costs. The reasons: a story deemed confusing, an unbalanced narrative, and above all, fierce competition that year with behemoths like the highly anticipated Avengers: Age of Ultron and the surprise success of the new Mad Max (Fury Road). A persistent rumor quickly began circulating in Hollywood: Disney had deliberately sabotaged the film's promotion, upset that Brad Bird had refused to direct the new Star Wars episode (which was released the same year). A way to make a director deemed too independent pay for his insubordination? Officially, nothing has leaked, but the studio's radio silence after the film's release is striking.
Since this failure, Brad Bird seems trapped in a time loop: that of The Incredibles. After Tomorrowland, he returned to the adventures of his famous family of superheroes with The Incredibles 2, then went on to a series of projects announced but never launched, before resigning himself to accepting a third installment of The Incredibles. As if trapped in the geeky gift shop that the heroine Casey walked through in Tomorrowland, full of robots and outdated old toys frozen in time, Bird now seems stuck in the past of his own successes, unable to return to the future he wanted to celebrate.
Today, the film is obviously available in the Disney+ catalog, but seems to have been forgotten by everyone.
And if you're passionate about Hollywood industry disasters, also check out our Disney files: the 8 biggest box-office failures of live-action remakes, or Star Wars: 10 embarrassing moments we'd like to forget.
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