Spaceship Earth TV Series Gets Disney+ Pilot Order: EPCOT Ride Comes to Streaming

Disney has spent the better part of two decades proving that theme park rides can become blockbuster movies. Now the mouse house is going one step further: turning an EPCOT attraction into a streaming series. Disney+ has officially ordered a pilot for Spaceship Earth, a new adventure series inspired by the iconic geodesic dome ride at Walt Disney World, and the creative team behind it reads like a who’s who of modern genre TV.

What Is Spaceship Earth?

If you’ve never visited EPCOT, Spaceship Earth is the slow-moving dark ride housed inside the park’s giant silver sphere — the building that basically is the park’s logo. The ride takes guests on a journey through the history of human communication, from cavemen painting on walls to the invention of the printing press to the rise of the personal computer. For decades it’s been narrated by legends like Walter Cronkite and Jeremy Irons, and more recently by Dame Judi Dench, who lends the attraction its warm, slightly wistful “humanity’s greatest hits” vibe.

It’s a strange property to adapt, which is exactly why it’s interesting. Unlike the swashbuckling action of Pirates of the Caribbean or the horror-comedy of the Haunted Mansion, Spaceship Earth has no villain, no chase scenes and no obvious story. It’s a meditation on progress. Turning that into a serialized adventure is a genuinely ambitious creative swing.

The Pilot Order

According to reports from Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, Disney+ has handed a pilot order to the project, which hails from 20th Television. The official logline teases: “When a mission to avert an imminent global cataclysm goes awry, a small band of teenagers from Earth’s past and future must join forces to confront a threat as vast and mysterious as time itself.”

So the ride’s time-travel framing becomes the engine for a teen ensemble adventure — think a Disney-branded blend of time-travel sci-fi and coming-of-age drama. Casting is reportedly underway, though no actors have been announced and there’s no premiere date yet. A pilot order means Disney+ will shoot a single episode to evaluate it; whether it becomes a full series depends on how that episode lands.

The Creative Team

The people attached are the most encouraging part of this news. Jason Fuchs, co-creator and co-showrunner of the acclaimed horror prequel series It: Welcome to Derry, is writing the pilot and serving as showrunner and executive producer. Fuchs has a stacked resume — he wrote Wonder Woman, Argylle and Ice Age: Continental Drift — and he clearly has a soft spot for theme park storytelling: back in 2013 he wrote an ABC pilot based on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, another Disney ride adaptation that never got off the ground.

He’s joined by Michael Waldron, the architect behind Loki and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, who executive produces and co-writes the pilot. Waldron is currently one of Marvel’s most in-demand writers, having co-written Avengers: Doomsday — so his involvement signals Disney is taking this project seriously rather than treating it as a content-farm afterthought.

Behind the camera, Lee Toland Krieger — who has directed episodes of You, Riverdale and Shadow and Bone — is attached to executive produce and direct the pilot. Adam Fishbach (Love, Victor, The Other Black Girl) and Adam Fasullo of Anomaly Pictures round out the producing team.

Disney’s Ride-to-Screen Pipeline

Spaceship Earth is just the latest stop on Disney’s increasingly busy ride-adaptation highway. The Jungle Cruise movie turned the classic boat ride into a blockbuster adventure starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, grossing more than $220 million worldwide, and a sequel is in the works. Pirates of the Caribbean grew from a single ride into a five-movie, $4.5 billion franchise. Even the Haunted Mansion has been adapted twice, with the 2023 version landing on Disney+ after its theatrical run.

And there’s more coming down the pipeline. A live-action Big Thunder Mountain Railroad movie has been in development for years, and Disney has reportedly flirted with adaptations of other attractions. The strategy makes sense: these are beloved, instantly recognizable brands with built-in nostalgia, and streaming gives Disney a lower-risk sandbox to test which ones have real storytelling legs.

A Ride With Real History

Part of what makes this adaptation worth getting excited about is the ride itself. Spaceship Earth has been an EPCOT anchor since the park opened in 1982, and it’s undergone multiple refurbishments over the decades — most recently in 2007, when the current narration and a new scene structure were introduced. The ride’s enduring popularity is a testament to how well its core idea works: it takes something as abstract as human progress and makes it feel personal, intimate and hopeful. That’s a surprisingly rich foundation for storytelling, even if the property doesn’t have the obvious hooks of a pirate adventure or a haunted house.

There’s also a nice thematic fit here. Spaceship Earth has always been about communication and connection across generations — cavemen sharing knowledge, scholars preserving it, inventors passing it forward. A story about teenagers from different eras teaming up to save the future is, in a sense, the ride’s thesis turned into a plot. If the writers lean into that idea instead of burying it under generic blockbuster action, this could be one of the more thoughtful shows Disney+ has produced.

Why This Matters

The Spaceship Earth pilot is worth paying attention to for a few reasons. First, it’s a sign of how far Disney’s streaming strategy has evolved — instead of just mining sequels and remakes, Disney+ is now commissioning original series from its parks IP, which is a fundamentally different creative exercise. Second, the talent attached suggests Disney wants quality, not just brand recognition. Waldron and Fuchs are exactly the kind of writers who can turn a premise like “teenagers from different eras team up to save the future” into something with actual emotional stakes.

For fans of Disney’s flagship streaming content like The Mandalorian, this is another sign that the platform is willing to take swings on high-concept genre fare. And for theme park nerds, it’s validation that the rides they love are being treated as more than nostalgia bait.

What to Expect Next

Pilot orders are inherently uncertain — plenty of great pilots never become series. But the pieces here are unusually promising: a proven showrunner, a Marvel-grade co-writer, an experienced pilot director, and source material that’s beloved without being overexposed. If the pilot delivers, Spaceship Earth could be the rare streaming series that genuinely feels like it could only exist on Disney+.

We’ll be watching for casting announcements and a premiere date. In the meantime, if you want a reminder of what Disney does best with beloved IP, there are worse ways to spend an evening than revisiting the ride’s movie cousins — whether that’s the high-seas adventure of Pirates of the Caribbean or the family-friendly thrills of Jungle Cruise.

CREDIT: Jungle Cruise — Image via TMDB

What do you think — is a Spaceship Earth series a great idea or a strange one? Would you watch a show about time-traveling teenagers trying to save the future?