With ‘Haunted Mansion’ arriving dead in the water, maybe it’s time for Disney to abandon the craze that’s lost the studio almost a billion dollars

As old as it makes an entire generation feel, it really has been 20 full years since Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl landed in theaters, which means Disney has been trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle for almost the exact same amount of time.

Not even the swashbuckling franchise could replicate its own magic seeing as reviews became progressively worse with each passing installment, but Haunted Mansion should realistically hammer the final nail into the coffin of a trend that the Mouse House has been trying and failing to manufacture for two decades, only to experience nothing but failure along the way.

Thanks to the success of Gore Verbinski’s classic blockbuster that introduced the world to the instantly-iconic Captain Jack Sparrow and launched a $4.5 billion IP, the studio has been relentlessly trying to either turn its other well-known theme park attractions into big budget crowd-pleasers, or attempted to transplant the Pirates formula to other genres without success.

Whether it’s on Mars (John Carter), the Wild West (The Lone Ranger), the desert (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), or a magical world lurking just beneath our own (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), each and every try has failed miserably, with those movies alone combining to lose upwards of $500 million.

Then there’s Jungle Cruise – which wound up $150 million in the red after its pandemic-afflicted theatrical run – or Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland, which lost roughly the same amount of money after bombing hard. Outside of Pirates of the Caribbean, it’s been nothing but flop after flop after flop, but with several more titles in development including Tower of Terror, Big Thunder Mountain, and Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion may not even be the end.