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Disney's 2023 "Haunted Mansion" movie boasts 999 ghosts — and nearly that many Easter eggs paying tribute to its source material. Disney first opened the Haunted Mansion theme park attraction in 1969 at Disneyland in California. The ride, which isn't based on any existing Disney story, slowly transports guests through a stately home occupied by hundreds of "happy haunts," as the narrator calls the ghosts who reside there.

Disney artists combined cutting-edge Audio-Animatronics technology, ingenious special effects, and superb music to create what many regard as the greatest theme park attraction of all time. Other versions of Haunted Mansion, some nearly identical to the original and others completely different, opened later at Walt Disney World, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland.

The intellectual property's storied legacy gave director Justin Simien and writer Katie Dippold a lot to work with when bringing their new adaptation to the silver screen. A clean slate from...

Disney has adapted its theme park attractions into movies several times, and with varying degrees of success. Everyone remembers "Pirates of the Caribbean," but the "Country Bears" movie from 2002 left a significantly smaller cultural footprint. Same with "The Haunted Mansion," the Eddie Murphy comedy from 2003. Now Disney is coming back for a second bite at the apple with the slightly differently titled "Haunted Mansion," written by Katie Dippold ("Parks and Recreation") and directed by Justin Simien ("Dear White People"), in an attempt to capitalize on the familiarity of the brand while capturing what makes that attraction so special.

But what exactly does make that Disney staple so special? If you polled theme park fans, none of them would blink if you called it the greatest theme park ride of all time. And if you asked Disney Imagineers -- the folks who actually design and build Disney theme park attractions -- why it's so special,...

In 2000, David Arquette, coming off “Never Been Kissed” and the third “Scream” film, co-starred in a comedy called “Ready to Rumble,” which attempted to satirize the hyperbolic freak show of professional wrestling. To promote the movie, Arquette got woven into World Championship Wrestling storylines, mostly as a comic foil — after all, he wasn’t a real wrestler. But a few weeks into the film’s release, in a setup bogus enough to shame Andy Kaufman, it was arranged that Arquette would win a fight to become the WCW Heavyweight Champion. Which he did (his reign lasted all of 12 days).

This was a stunt so outlandish that wrestling fans considered it a bridge of fakery too far. Some said that Arquette’s championship had ruined the sport. So even though Arquette, a wrestling aficionado from way back, was just riding the cross-promotional PR train and doing what he’d been told,...

Welcome to this review of National Wrestling Alliance: Hard Times, right here on Nerdly. I’m Nathan Favel and we have the finale of the TV Title Tournament, as well as Nick Aldis defending the Nwa World Title against Ring Of Honor’s Flip Gordon. Let’s get right to it.

The following four matches are part of the TV Title Tournament: Match #1: Trevor Murdoch defeated The Question Mark

My Opinion: 2.3 out of 5 – While not a great match, this was a fun way for Murdoch to get a win.

Match #2: Dan Maff defeated Zicky Dice

My Opinion: 3 out of 5 – This was a good little match with a lot of hard hits and big slams with the right winner.

Match #3: Ricky Starks defeated Matt Cross

My Opinion: 3.2 out of 5 – This was a fine match that saw the more famous Cross put over a top prospect in Starks,...

Welcome to this week’s review of National Wrestling Alliance: Powerrr, right here on Nerdly. I’m Nathan Favel and we have a special 90-minute season finale for the go-home show to Hard Times. Ricky Morton is back to have his massive World Title Match against Nick Aldis. It sounds like we’ve got a good show here.

Match #1: Thunder Rosa defeated Tasha Steelz

My Opinion: 2.7 out of 5 – This was getting good, but it stopped after just two or so minutes. Why not let this sucker go for a while? Fortunately, this was a case of two women getting a lot in to a small space.

Match #2: Trevor Murdoch defeated Tom Lattimer – TV Title Tournament Match

My Opinion: 2.9 out of 5 – This was a brisk battle that went…two minutes. I thought the 90-minute window would allow for longer matches? Any-way, these two worked very well together for...

Welcome to the first National Wrestling Alliance: Powerrr review, right here on Nerdly. I’m Nathan Favel and I didn’t choose to name the damn show “Powerrr”. I think the extra “r” or two is there because of coke-lines or something. This show is a one-hour broadcast that is modeled on the old Jim Crockett TV format, so expect nostalgia lined with Punky Brewster hair-gel and Alf condoms, “because he can’t spend all day eating pussy…cat”. This isn’t always a show designed to offer great wrestling, but it does have some great production values and a very lively atmosphere. Let’s get to this time-warped trip through Billy Corgan’s bank account before he smashes my pumpkin.

Match #1: Aron Stevens defeated Sal Rinauro – Submission Challenge Match

My Opinion: 2.3 out of 5 – This went all of two minutes and was…A Squaaaaaaaaaaaash! No! No! Damn it!

Would you believe someone if they confessed to over 600 murders? Netflix is back with its true-crime content, this time taking on the very curious case of convicted murderer Henry Lee Lucas in the docuseries The Confession Killer. During his longest stint in prison, Lucas confessed to hundreds of murders, which, ironically, brought him preferential treatment in jail. But obviously, there have been reasonable doubts over Lucas's grand claims. So, how many people did history's allegedly most prolific murderer actually kill? The answer is probably much less.

Let's rewind to Lucas's first known murder. In 1960, Lucas, just 23 at the time, was arrested for killing his abusive mother during an argument. Despite claiming self-defense, he faced a 20- to 40-year sentence at Michigan State Penitentiary. In 1970, he was released from jail on parole due to prison overcrowding. Lucas returned to prison in Texas during the '80s after confessing to the murders...

Snow White was a risk that could have finished Disney. Ryan looks at how the world's first animated feature changed the landscape of cinema

In 2013, Walt Disney Animation Studios released Frozen, its 53rd animated feature. With takings of well over $1bn and counting, it ranks as the most successful animated film of all time, eclipsing the previous title holder - Pixar's Toy Story 3 - by around $200m.

For a generation who've grown up with such films as The Lion King and Tangled, Disney probably seems like an immovable cultural force: as recognisable and unchanging as Mount Rushmore or the American flag. But Disney has survived a series of peaks and troughs since its founding in the 1920s, from its decline in the 1970s and early 80s, its revival in the 90s, and its second burst of creative energy in the 2000s.

From its inception, Disney Animation Studios has moved with the times,...

Feature Mark Harrison 5 Mar 2014 - 06:39

For every animated movie that gets made, there are dozens more that never make it. Mark looks at some failed Disney projects...

In the age of the internet, Hollywood studios are much quicker to announce the projects they have in development than they used to be. Now that the demand is there, there's a huge turnover of movie-related news every day, and if you follow it in any significant way, there are probably a whole bunch of projects that you've heard about, maybe even gotten excited about, that never came to fruition.

Still, it's not only via the easier availability of such information that we know about projects that never came to be. At a studio like Disney, projects will get as far as being fully developed in animatic form before falling apart, and the artefacts left behind from such abridged projects have made for some fascinating reading.

The Aristocats

Written by Ken Anderson, Larry Clemmons, Eric Cleworth et al.

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman

USA, 1970

The 1970s and early 1980s represent a curious episode in the history of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ features. The famous studio rarely produces outright poor movies, yet this period is just as rarely mentioned in the same breath as its first decade or so, when classics like Pinocchio, Bambi, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came to be, or the baptized renaissance that began with The Little Mermaid and lasted until Tarzan. It feels as though the aforementioned decade and a half feature a steady stream of decent, generally appreciated outings but nothing most people cite as being their favourite efforts. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood; few if any of these make anyone’s top 5 lists. Neither does the film that opened the 1970s,...

Ken Anderson, who oversaw the smoking, blood-spitting and spectacularly pyrotechnic Kiss stage shows as the heavy-metal band’s production manager from 1976-82, has died. He was 75. Anderson died of cancer Dec. 15 at his home in Hallandale Beach, Fla.; his family did not announce the news until this week. With Anderson in charge as vp production at Aucoin Management – the company headed by Bill Aucoin, who discovered and managed Kiss -- the band’s live act was over-the-top extravagant and jaw-dropping. The shows featured full makeup, fire-breathing, lightning bolts, levitating drum kits, trapdoors, confetti storms, band members lifted about

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The Rescuers

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, John Lounsbery, Art Stevens

Written by Larry Clemmons, Vance Gerry, Ken Anderson, Frank Thomas, Burny Mattinson, Fred Lucky, Dick Sebast, Dave Michener

Starring Bob Newhart, Eva Gabor, Geraldine Page, Pat Buttram, George Lindsey

One of the most fascinating aspects of our podcast is watching the struggle within the Walt Disney Company to blend reality and fantasy. From the beginning, Disney had stated that he wanted movies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to be perceived as films for adults, as opposed to films for children or families. I’m always heartened to see that comment brought up in modern conversation, because the stigma that animation is specifically for children hasn’t ever dissipated in popular culture. What frustrates me is the film Disney refers to, and how it became a template of sorts for the animators and filmmakers who work at the Walt Disney Company.

Over sixty years have passed since Disney’s Cinderella first screened to mass audiences. Yet, the film is as poignant today as it was over a half century ago.

The storybook tale of a young girl and her mice friends is filled with a heartfelt abundance of laughs and toe-tapping music. Whether you’re listening to a group of mice singing “The Work Song” or Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother casting magical enchantments to the tune of “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, it’s hard not to instantly fall in love with Cinderella’s soundtrack. The humor holds up surprisingly well. Watching Gus and Jaques (both voiced by James MacDonald) face off against Lady Tremaine’s cat Lucifer never gets old.

The new Diamond Blu-ray release features a crisp 1080p HD picture, presented in a 1:33:1 aspect ratio. The sound has been remastered to optimize all the music tracks. Listening to Ilene Woods, who voiced Cinderella,...

The Aristocats

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman

Written by Ken Anderson, Larry Clemmons, Eric Cleworth, Vance Garry, Tom McGowan, Tom Rowe, Julius Svendsen, Frank Thomas, and Ralph Wright

Starring Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Scatman Crothers

Complacency is always a dangerous tone to strike in filmmaking. Combined with cheapness, it can be a killer. Those two concepts are what stand out most of all from the Wolfgang Reitherman era of Walt Disney Pictures. For various reasons, most of which were beyond Reitherman’s control, most of the films from Walt Disney Pictures between 1959’s Sleeping Beauty and 1989’s The Little Mermaid felt cheap and lazy. (Being fair, Reitherman’s time at the company ended, for the most part, with 1977’s The Rescuers, but the four films between that and Mermaid have varying aspects of laziness on display, I think.) And make no mistake: the word “cheap” does not need to be a criticism.

The Jungle Book

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman

Written by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson, and Vance Gerry

Starring Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, George Sanders, Louis Prima, Sterling Holloway

Why are so many Disney movies incapable of creating indelible lead characters? I wonder if that question is tantamount to heresy for many Disney buffs, but it’s worth asking. Don’t get me wrong: there are a number of Disney movies that work so well thanks in no small part to the lead character, from Belle in Beauty and the Beast to Tiana in The Princess and the Frog. (And, for the purposes of this argument, I’m leaving aside any Pixar movies.) But a whole host of Disney movies, ones that we consider classics, have a great, big, gaping hole at their center, counterbalanced by colorful supporting characters.

Take, for instance, Aladdin. Though we’ll talk about this 1992 animated...

While he's no Terrence Malick, Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung isn't exactly rushing movies out. Since his critically acclaimed debut "The Scent Of Green Papaya" in 1993, only five films have arrived from the helmer, one of which, neo-noir "I Come With The Rain" starring Josh Hartnett, has never really seen the light of day. During that time in the limelight, though, Tran had one particular project fall apart at the seams: his adaptation of Kent Anderson's post-war drama "Night Dogs," which he recently discussed with Twitch. "It was a great book called 'Night Dogs' by Ken Anderson, about a Vietnam vet, set in 1975, Portland, Oregon. After I read the book, one of those eureka moments happened. I got up one morning and my head was filled with Jimi Hendrix songs. (Claps his hands) Bang! I really wanted to use about 11 Jimi Hendrix songs for that adaptation. It would've been great.

While Melissa holds down Hall H and the Lr crew takes the stage for the Masters of the Web panel at Comic Con, I'm over in New York is super psyched about Guillermo Del Toro re-booting the marred Haunted Mansion film franchise. Mainly, because the Haunted Mansion is one of my geek obsessions and the Eddie Murphy movie laughed at the very intriguing and Existing plot threads embedded in the Disneyland ride. I’m a big fan of Disneyland, even if the company that runs it occasionally makes NewsCorp look like the lesser of two evils. Despite Walt Disney’s numerous faults (naming names during McCarthyism to bring up the obvious), I like the idea of a man who had enough balls to devise a theme park that went far beyond a carnival, a traveling fair or cheap amusements.Disneyland as an idea, stripped of what it means to be sold childhood memories,...