Disney's “The Haunted Mansion” was to be a live-action movie based on the attraction. It was eventually cancelled.
History[]
A script for a Haunted Mansion movie was written by the Disney historian and blogger Jim Hill and Sheila Greenberg in the 1990's, and sent to Disney based on some vague hopes. It was inspired by the early backstories for the Mansion written by Marc Davis, Ken Anderson and X. Atencio. The Disney producers, surprisingly enough, appreciated it and greenlit the project. However, they changed their mind after another supernatural live-action movie of theirs, Hocus Pocus, spectacularly bombed at the box office a few months later. The project was then cancelled, though the script has since been posted on DoomBuggies.com.
A decade later, the project of a Haunted Mansion live-action film was revived, but with a whole new script and team.
Summary[]
In 1893 Maryland, Captain Bloodworth and his crew have long been a menace to ships on the Chesapeake Bay, but orders his crew to lay low after their latest raid since he is wishing to avoid scrutiny towards his public identity, Jacob Gracey. Three weeks later at Gracey Mansion in the town of Greenhill, Jacob Gracey's marriage to the reluctant Kathleen Fowler, the daughter of Gracey's business associate Clarence Fowler, is about to take place. The Fowler family has fallen into debt to Gracey after their shipping business came under attack from Bloodworth's crew, with Jacob agreeing to cancel said debts after the wedding. The wedding preparations are interrupted when Charles Davis, a friend of Kathleen, arrives at the Manor with the constable to arrest Jacob after his pirate crew was captured and confessed to his identity. Jacob kills Kathleen by pushing her off a balcony, stabs Charlie with his cane sword, and after being shot by the constable, lays a curse on the house, "With my last dying breath I curse you to stay trapped in my Mansion ’til Kate’s wedding day!". In grief after having lost his daughter, Clarence ended up hanging himself, leaving his youngest daughter Julia behind.
Over 100 years later, Julia Fowler, the last surviving attendee of the wedding, is living in the Greenhill Rest Home. Knowing her life is nearing its end, she has hired Madame Leota Crump, medium and owner of the Museum of the Weird, to help save her soul from Jacob's curse. Leota is joined by teenagers working in the rest home, a volunteer named Shawna and a juvenile delinquent doing community service named Will. After Jacob Gracey's ghost terrifies Julia into a near-death state, Leota begins a ritual to try and safely guide Julia to the other side and keep her out of Jacob's reach. Jacob ends up making his way through and uses a magic spell to trap Julia's soul inside of her old doll. The three mortals take Leota's van to the Mansion in pursuit.
Meanwhile, as a storm rolls in, groundskeeper Justin Jorgensen and his dog Queenie encounter Baxter, the ghost of the Mansion's kennelmaster, while making their rounds in the cemetery near the house. Baxter is scolded for "haunting before midnight" by fellow ghosts Mumford, the butler, and Gordon, the liveryman, before Jacob returns to the house and tasks them with guarding the house from the three mortals coming to the house while he goes to the graveyard to see Kathleen, using Julia to blackmail her into marrying him. The three ghosts thwart Leota's attempts to breach the gates with bolt cutters, leading her to bluff them into letting her in by claiming a road flare is a "ghost-proof" C-4 explosive, giving her time to ram the van through the gate while the ghosts take cover. After explaining they've come to rescue Julia, the ghosts agree to help them.
As they search the house for Julia's soul doll, they come across a ship in a stormy bottle in the Sitting Room, a Portrait Gallery containing other souls Gracey has trapped such as the Duelists Craig and Claude Sewell, and the Banquet Hall where Mrs. Blair celebrates the birthday she died on for eternity. Looking for where Gracey would keep important things, the tour ends up moving to the Library (which is mixed with the Conservatory), where they find the spell book Gracey used for his curse and soul trapping spells. Their search ends up awakening the Singing Busts kept in the room, alerting Jacob to their presence. Gracey throws the mortals out of the house through the Conservatory windows and out by the dock, severely injuring Leota in the process, and after learning his three servants helped them, boots them out as well and sealing the broken windows. As Kathleen witnesses Gracey's dark powers, he seals the doors and windows shut.
Mortally wounded, Leota has Shawna bind her soul to her crystal ball, with her body being washed away into the river as part of the dock decays. Looking for a way back into the house, Will, Shawna and the four ghosts end up going in through a secret passage in the nearby Boathouse, meeting Baxter's dogs and encountering a Floating Candelabra in the darkness that leads them to a Treasure Room containing the Fowler Imports shipment Gracey stole to impoverish the family. They arrive back inside the Mansion just as Gracey has begun preparations for the wedding and go up to the Attic and find Clarence and Kathleen. As they talk about Gracey's blackmail plot and dark powers, Leota realizes the best way to stop the wedding is to go back to how it was stopped the first time, and asks the three servant ghosts to stall the wedding. While Leota, Shawna and Will search the graveyard for Charles Davis's grave to perform a seance (and frighten the Caretaker when he finds them), the servant ghosts switch the Organist's sheet music with "Take Me Out to The Ballgame" and have the dogs steal Gracey's swordcane. Fed up with the nonsense delaying the ceremony, Gracey threatens to destroy Julia's doll and her soul with it, and gets the wedding on track. As Reverend Ryman asks if there are any objectives to the marriage, Charles enters to fight the pirate ghost and rallies the other ghostly attendees to fight back. Gracey flees through the portrait gallery, being shot at by the Duelists, before taking refuge in the Library and sealing the door.
Having gotten Julia's soul doll back and realizing the curse wasn't specific on who Katie had to marry, she and Charlie decided to get married. However, Jacob uses a spell to call the souls of his crew from the depths of hell. The pirate ghosts attack the wedding to reclaim the doll, capture the humans and the Bride, while Gracey tries to break Leota's crystal ball and destroy her soul. In order to save her and stop Bloodworth and his crew once and for all, Shawna and Will use the sealing spell to bind the pirate ghosts to the bottled ship in the Sitting Room. Charlie and Katie are finally married, Julia is freed from the doll, and the curse is lifted, freeing the ghosts inside. But while the Fowler family leaves the house and moves on, some of the other ghostly occupants decide to stay behind, as the Mansion has become a much nicer place with Gracey gone. Madame Leota likes the idea and puts a call out to the spirit world to open up Gracey Mansion as a home for wayward spirits. While Leota becomes enamored with a Beheaded Knight that was one of the early arrivals, Will and Shawna take Leota's van home, though Baxter has decided to hitch a ride and follow them home.