This is a story a lot of sites jumped on immediately this morning, but were left with some tainted details when the original source clarified some stuff they messed up. Since I’m just now moseying into this particular range, I can specify that while it’s come out that Brad Bird and David Lindelof have Close Encounter of the Third Kind in mind with 1952, the film is not about alien contact with humans.
…or they’re outright lying, because that’s the big secret and it’s already out! Who knows?
In any event, this minor correction doesn’t preclude the Close Encounters-like film –which will feature a Roy Neary-style protagonist– from being about the suspicion of alien activity on earth, and all of the events that sparked our government’s interest in the topic around the year 1952. That said, the film is said to take place after the eponymous year in question, so it’s too soon to speculate too much on the actual plot.
All that aside, there is an interesting anecdote at the heart of today’s story- apparently Lindelof was given access to a box of notes leftover from the Walt Disney days that bore the label “1952” (atop a scratched out That Darn Cat! label) and contained a bunch of documents and photos that were assembled as research for some unknown project, be it film, show, or theme park ride. The box had been left among the efffects of Walt Disney’s “personal develeopment lab” run by WED Enterprises, which later morphed into the Imagineering department.
All of that sounds just mysterious enough to be fake, especially with rumors that the studio plans to do some serious JJ Abrams style viral marketing that would begin well before the movie even starts filming. How much meta-wanking there will be about this being some kind of Disney-style found materials film about some actual UFO business is up in the air, but I’d consider it a strong possibility.
Regardless, 1952 is moving forward, so we’ll see what starts permeating through that veil of secrecy. Disney exec Sean Bailey and Damon Lindelof were together at the Storyworld Conference today giving a talk, but from the tweets it doesn’t sound like they let anything slip about 1952.
Source | Vulture