Disney is putting the people who build its worlds on camera. Disney Worldbuilders, a feature-length documentary from filmmaker Leslie Iwerks, starts streaming August 20 on Disney+, and it’s built around candid conversations with the storytellers behind Avatar, Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pixar, Frozen and Zootopia.
The interview list is the draw. Bob Iger, James Cameron, Jon Favreau, Kevin Feige, Jennifer Lee, Pete Docter, Dave Filoni, Jared Bush and Josh D’Amaro all sit down with Iwerks to talk about the memories and creative breakthroughs that shaped their work, and how those stories end up as places at Disney’s theme parks.
Disney’s framing of the process is that a story can inspire a place, and that place can then inspire the next story, a back-and-forth that goes back to Walt himself. The film also includes a look at upcoming lands at Disney destinations around the globe, part of what the company calls one of the most ambitious periods of creative expansion in its history. That’s the stretch park fans will rewind.
When does Disney Worldbuilders premiere?
The Disney+ date is August 20, but the world premiere lands four days earlier. Disney Worldbuilders screens in full at D23 on Sunday, August 16, where attendees will be among the first to see the whole thing. If you’re going that Sunday, the documentary plays there before anyone watches it at home.
Iwerks said she wanted to understand what ignites the imaginations of the storytellers behind some of the world’s most beloved stories. “As I sat down with each of them, I discovered a common thread: they often traced their creative journeys back to a single childhood moment, walking through the gates of Disneyland and realizing that impossible dreams could become real,” Iwerks said. “It’s a feeling I know well, and one that has shaped my own journey.”
Who is Leslie Iwerks?
She’s a third-generation Disney name. Her grandfather, Ub Iwerks, was Walt Disney’s original animator and a co-creator of Mickey Mouse. Her father, Don Iwerks, was a camera technician and inventor at Walt Disney Studios. Both are Academy Award winners and Disney Legends.
Iwerks, who is Academy Award and Emmy nominated herself, directed The Imagineering Story, The Pixar Story, Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible, and most recently Disneyland Handcrafted. Her company, Iwerks & Co., produced this one for Disney+.
Shark Take: The person who made The Imagineering Story got Iger, Cameron, Feige and D’Amaro in the same film, with new lands in it. D23 attendees on August 16 get first crack at it, and everyone else waits four days.
Source: The Walt Disney Company
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