‘Space Mountain’ Movie Lands ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Showrunners (Exclusive)

Action scribes Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec are going to Disneyland.

The prolific team behind Amazon’s high-profile spy series Citadel and showrunners on Netflix’s adaptation of Cowboy Bebop have been tapped to write Disney’s live-action adaptation of Space Mountain.

Jonathan Eirich from Rideback, the banner that is behind Netflix’s hit live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series, is producing the feature, which has been in development for several years, along with Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell of Safehouse Pictures. Harold was the project’s previous writer. Rideback’s Ryan Halprin is exec producing.

Space Mountain is the venerable space-themed indoor roller coaster that was first introduced in Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort in 1975, followed by an installation in California’s Disneyland in 1977. It became a fixture in the Tomorrowland section as other parks opened up and is now in five of the six parks around the world. 

The ride has no overarching theme nor memorable characters seen in such rides as Pirates of the Caribbean. In fact, Space Mountain in Disneyland has been turned into Hyperspace Mountain and given a Star Wars makeover on occasion. As such, the story is being created whole cloth with the ride acting as inspiration.

Plot details are being kept in the hair-sweeping rush of the dark void as Appelbaum and Nemec build out the story.

While the duo may be currently known for their series work, they have plenty of feature work under their belt. Their credits include 2011’s Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol, directed by Brad Bird, and the two live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that Paramount made in the mid-2010s, among other movies.

The duo is repped by WME and Sloane Offer.