Disney Backstories from the Outside

Many of us Imagineering geeks have always thought of Disney ‘owning’ all the back story work to their popular franchises and theme parts.  There are untold stories across Imagineering lore and legend about the cooked up stories that guide the design processes and thoughts behind just about everything that shows up in a Disney theme park.

I had always thought that somehow that was true for the entire company (if there were backstories to be had in other parts of the company), but no more.  Business Week recently ran an article about Jeff Gomez, the founder and head of Starlight Runner Entertainment.

It turns out that Mr. Gomez and crew have been busy building backstories for lots of products on the market:  Hot Wheels, Coca-Cola and Transformers to name a few.  It’s interesting to note that this ties to Disney in that they apparently built much of the backstory for Jack Sparrow.   That story led to the book series produced and released by Disney and that supposedly helped market the later films.  The article also notes that Gomez and crew are hard at work on the backstory for the upcoming Tron 2 movie as well.

Seems that the guys in Disney Studios are taking a page right out of the Imagineering play book – only sourcing it from the outside.