Also, today from the archives, let’s celebrate the Magic of Willow with Lucasfilm Fan Club Official Magazine #6!
This issue, from winter 1989, was the last Willow-related cover. There wasn’t actually a lot of Willow-related content in this issue besides an interview from Dan Madsen with Kevin Pollak (Rool in Willow) and a couple of questions in the featured article, Dan Madsen’s interview with GL himself, “George Lucas: The Force Behind Lucasfilm.”
The interview covered many topics from Lucas’s (then) 20+ year career in the film industry, with a balance of franchises covered, from Star Wars to Indiana Jones to Willow.
One of the more revealing interview responses by Lucas was that there were already plans to do an Indiana Jones-themed ride at a Disney theme park. While this may have seemed like a no-brainer due to the success of Lucas’s partnership with Disney beginning with Captain EO, and the success of Star Tours at Disneyland, which opened two years earlier, the Florida and Tokyo versions had not yet been completed, and Disneyland Paris was still three years away from completion.
When Disney-MGM Studios theme park opened in May 1989 it was pretty light on both attractions and shows, focusing more on show business and being an operating film and television studio, an animation facility, and an operating backlot. Construction was accelerated to have the park open a month ahead of the similarly themed Universal Studios Florida, a few miles away, and by the end of the summer, the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular stage show opened and continues today.
An actual Indy-themed ride was not realized until 1993 when Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril opened at Disneyland Paris. In 1995, Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye opened at Disneyland Park with a very similar attraction Temple of the Crystal Skull debuting at Tokyo DisneySea when that park opened in 2001. Despite the name, the attraction is pretty unrelated to the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, much like this post is pretty unrelated to Willow. 😉
The Willow film turned 37 years old this week! I figure there’ll be a new Willow item from my collection to share here for the rest of the month. Happy 37 years to the Magic of Willow!
Dale's Toys 