DIRECTOR JUSTIN Simien has a history steeped in Disney, he tells SFX. The films he grew up with – Beauty And The Beast, Oliver And Company and The Little Mermaid – were, he says, “a big deal in me figuring out I even wanted to be a filmmaker”.
Visiting Disney World “all the time” as a kid – before later working at the theme park (a ride operator at Grizzly River Run in Disneyland, fact fans) while studying at film school – it was Haunted Mansion that was his favourite attraction. Specifically, he was intrigued by the trickery of it all: “When the hitchhiking ghosts are on your arm at the end of the ride, that used to really fuck me up as a kid.”
Fortunately, it didn’t put him off when reading the script for a new live action movie. “I felt that there was a cultural specificity that I could bring to it that I just always felt was missing from the attraction at Disneyland,” he recalls. “You really don’t get a sense of the place, but New Orleans in the 1800s is a very specific
