Remember how Scarlett Johansson is doing a Tower Of Terror movie? Perhaps not: The film was announced in “early development” back in 2021, with Johansson set to star and produce. Sometimes a project such as this might simply dissipate behind the scenes, but Disney is not likely to leave valuable intellectual property on the table, even if the IP is, as Johansson notes, somewhat flimsy. “It’s a hard nut to crack,” she tells Entertainment Weekly. “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!”
Nevertheless, Johansson persists in making this movie though the ride “doesn’t have so much to dig into” in terms of narrative. Part of the attraction’s “mystery,” as Johansson puts it, is that the story—a Twilight Zone inspired mystery in which five people disappeared in the elevator of the fictional “Hollywood Tower Hotel”—leaves a lot to the imagination. So, “It’s been a fun project to work on, because it’s a blue sky project,” the actor says. “It has also proved to be a hard nut to crack. But, we’ll crack the case of it. It’s taking shape!”
Even though Johansson is an Oscar-nominated actor with mad Marvel money, she isn’t above a family-friendly blockbuster (Jurassic World Rebirth premieres July 2). And even though she got into a contentious legal spat with Disney, she’s not above working with them, either. When it was first announced, Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley was attached to write the screenplay (Johansson had a voice role in Cooley’s other directorial effort, Transformers One). Johansson’s last update on this subject came in 2023, when she told ComicBook.com that “Right before the [writers’] strike, we were in the middle of developing it, and now everything is at a simmer.” A few months later during a Today Show appearance, she said, “Now that the writers’ strike is all over with, we’re finally able to dive back into polishing up this script. It’s a massive, huge undertaking.” Sorry to any Tower fans out there, but hey, at least it’s still in the works!
