The Future of Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom

[Eoghann]

Never say never. Disney has been wheeling and dealing to get some of the Marvel characters back (for example Iron Man from Paramount, and they are going into a joint development deal with Sony on Spider Man). They have also been building up some of Marvels less known IP such as Guardians of the galaxy.

Also the deal signed with Universal has an expansion and shrinkage clause that basically says Universal has to continuously pump in money or the exclusivity shrinks. It's a no-win for Universal. They can maintain the Marvel Universe using only the characters they are allowed to - but at a price of paying Disney (their competitor) more and more money. Plus some of those clauses already ran out - I think Marvel reverted back to Disney West of the Mississippi since Universal didn't develop that within the permitted time frame. So technically Disney could use the marvel characters in DisneyLand as a pilot with expansion to the world down the line. Also I believe international rights reverted (I don't think Universal opened a Marvel park outside of the US?).

So it's something of a complicated mess, but suffice it to say that Disney has 'wiggle' room, and you can bet they are wiggling.

Well I didn't say never. The point I was addressing was the open ended nature of the licenses and how Marvel had actually done a lot of these during its bankruptcy. It's up to Universal when the license ends, not Disney. The only reason the rights west of the Mississippi reverted is that Universal chose not to pay for them to continue. So long as Universal is making good money off the license we aren't going to see those characters in Disney World.

 

[Kiwini]

"goo goo"

Googie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googie_architecture

Googie heavily influenced retro-futurism. The exaggerated style is appropriately exemplified in the The Jetsons cartoons, and the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California featured a Googie Tomorrowland (much of Tomorrowland still features Googie architecture, such as the Tomorrowland Terrace, Pizza Port, and Disneyland Railroad station). Googie was also the inspiration for the set design style of the Pixar movie The Incredibles and the animated television series Jimmy Neutron and Futurama.​