Scarlett Johansson gives ‘Tower of Terror’ movie update on adapting ride story

Scarlett Johansson is nearly ready to invite you (if you dare) to step aboard her movie adaptation of Disney World’s iconic Twilight Zone Tower of Terror drop ride — and, as she reveals to Entertainment Weeklythe star is hard at work on refining the upcoming film’s story.

Years after the project was first announced, the Jurassic World Rebirth actress explains in a new interview that she can’t say much about the long-gestating movie, but that she and Disney are hard at work in adapting the haunted hotel-themed narrative from the 1994 Twilight Zone-centric drop tower attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios park in Orlando, Fla.

“It’s a hard nut to crack. Harder than you think, because the ride itself, there’s some lore to it, but it’s… I don’t want to say thin, but it is, kind of!” Johansson explains of the ride’s plot, which is set in the same universe as Rod Sterling’s iconic anthology TV series. It follows five souls who are transported to the Twilight Zone after boarding an elevator inside the Hollywood Tower Hotel that’s ultimately struck by lightning during a storm.

Johansson says that the ride’s narrative “doesn’t have so much to dig into” in terms of fleshing it out into a full Hollywood film, and thinks that kind of brief story works for a horror-tinged theme park attraction.

“That’s part of the mystery of the ride. It’s been a fun project to work on, because it’s a blue sky project,” explains Johansson. “It has also proved to be a hard nut to crack. But, we’ll crack the case of it. It’s taking shape!”

Disney previously confirmed that Johansson was still working on the film following the resolution of their brief legal dispute over the release of 2021’s Black Widowwhich included a statement from the studio at the time that indicated it “look[s] forward to working together on a number of upcoming projects, including Disney’s Tower of Terror.”

The Tower of Terror is one of Disney World’s most popular attractions, standing 199 feet tall and spawning multiple other iterations at Disney parks around the world, including at the Walt Disney Studios park in France, Tokyo DisneySea in Japan, and at Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland resort in California (all of which had different stories and themes than the Florida version).

In 2017, however, the Disneyland version was revamped to fit into the new Avengers Campus section, with the Tower of Terror theming removed in favor of a Guardians of the Galaxy makeover.

Amid speculation that Disney World might soon revamp its version of the ride as well, pop star and Wicked actress Ariana Grande recently made an impassioned plea on the The bodybuilders podcast that the company preserve the Tower of Terror in its original form.

“Please allow the iconic and tremendous Tower of Terror to stand tall, permanently in the name of historical preservation, spooky honor, and good, old-fashioned fun. I hope that you’ll consider this humble plea from a passionate fan,” she told Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang in November on the show.

Though Johansson’s upcoming project is poised to be a major one, it’s not the first movie adaptation of the Tower of Terror attraction.

In 1997, Steve Guttenberg and Kirsten Dunst appeared in a made-for-TV movie, also titled Tower of Terrorwhich was partially filmed around the exterior of the original Tower of Terror ride at Disney World. Still, the movie removed any connection to the Twilight Zone portion of the ride’s theming.

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Jurassic World Rebirth is in theaters July 2. Watch Disney World’s Tower of Terror ride in action in the video above.