If there is any one thing that has made Clive Barker truly stand apart as a creator, it has been his incredible ability to tell stories within a variety of mediums. He seamlessly transitioned from horror fiction to horror film incredibly early in his career, had made a living in macabre theatre before that, and has since tackled video games, comics and even action figures as well. With each of these things, he always managed to tell stories that were distinctly his own, with his own specific voice and style, while also always managing to cater to the specific strengths of these often incredibly diverse mediums. When looking at his career as a whole, it seems like there’s almost nothing he hasn’t done. That’s what I love about the subject of this article. When you say “Clive Barker almost had his own park at Disneyland,” there’s that one small part of the most seasoned Barker fan that might say, “Okay, I can see it,” while the rest are simultaneously saying, “I’m sorry, what?”
But let’s back up to how Barker even got to that point in the first place, because it is without a doubt jarring to hear that one of the highly regarded, so-called “Masters of Horror” would have a deal with Disney, let alone one so massive that it almost led to an actual park. Barker had already had a working relationship with Disney, however loosely, through Miramax. At this point in time, that studio was owned by Disney, and Miramax had owned the Hellraiser franchise since 1992, beginning with American distribution for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. Barker was involved as a producer on both that and to a lesser degree the subsequent sequel, Bloodline, but after the experience on that entry and the move toward direct-to-video for the series, his involvement stopped.
In fact, around the same time Barker began to become less involved with the Hellraiser franchise, he began to for the most part transition out of the horror genre in general. This gradual switch had begun in the late ‘80s with the publication of the dark fantasy novel Weaveworld. That really marked the kind of ambitious world-building that—as an author, at least—would define Barker’s career. Weaveworld was followed by other massive, incredible works of fantasy like The Great and Secret Show, Everville, Galilee and Imajica. He also tried his hand at writing young adult fiction with incredible success in The Thief of Always. By the time 2000 rolled around, Barker had become one of the world’s most prominent fantasy authors and had already penned a successful children’s book, which is incredibly important to note.
This was a time in his career, even if he is still so immediately well known as a horror maestro, where Disney coming to his doorstep not only made sense, but felt kind of natural.
With all of the aforementioned success, the early 2000s saw Barker embark on his most ambitious journey yet—truly saying something, for him—a four-part young adult fantasy series that he would not only write, but for which he would also paint hundreds of accompanying illustrations. In 2000, he had already begun to paint some of the larger characters and concepts behind the series, which he titled Abarat. The series, for those unfamiliar, revolves around a collection of twenty-five islands that make up the Abarat, each island pertaining to a different hour of the day, with the twenty-fifth as a sort of time out of time.
Hearing of Barker’s new project, some executives from Disney came to his house and Barker walked them through the world, essentially telling them the story of Abarat in what sounds like a cross between a pitch and honest-to-goodness story time as he also showed them each of the completed paintings up to that point. The world, the vibrance, the characters and the scope, it clearly made a mark on the folk from Disney.
After that one meeting they bought Abarat for eight million dollars.
The deal included the rights to the books, to the already planned feature film adaptations, toys and, most interestingly, an accompanying park to be built at both Disneyland and Disney World. This is absolutely wild for a lot of reasons. Eight million meant a little more then than it does now, first of all, especially to buy a book series that hadn’t been written yet. They clearly loved this idea if they just bought it at first glance, seemingly intending to build a minor empire around it. When one takes in the film climate of the early 2000s, though, things begin to make a little more sense.
Barker said it best in an interview with Fangoria #200 in March of 2001: “What they’ve done is something they’ve never done before: they’ve bought a world from the inside out. They came out and saw a house full of paintings, and heard me talk about the world and the characters and the philosophies, and they said, ‘We want to exploit this material in every medium we’re in, from theater through parks, through toys, whatever.’ And that was my dream for this material. It’s a wonderful marriage.”
Fall of 2001 saw the premier of both the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter franchises on the big screen. Both were based on successful book series, both had tie-in toys and video games, and both were hugely successful at the box office. Both of those were built-in franchises as well, promising to deliver an entry a year, or close to it, until the stories wrapped up. And even then, though likely unplanned at the time, both found ways to continue on, regardless. Most importantly of all: neither of those franchises belonged to Disney. While Barker’s genius and energetic ambition behind Abarat no doubt played a part in Disney’s excitement over it, we cannot overlook the fact that Disney also clearly wanted their own Harry Potter. Badly.
About as soon as the first book was published, development began on the screenplay. John Harrison became attached as writer and delivered a draft of the script in 2004. Yes, the very same John Harrison who had composed the scores for Creepshow and Day of the Dead and had directed Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, which adds even more horror legacy to this attempted Disney project. It made perfect sense, though, as Harrison had just written Disney’s Dinosaur at the time. Disney planned on producing Abarat as a trilogy, despite the four planned books, with the first two books forming the basis for the first movie. One can easily assume that Disney planned to release an entry of the trilogy each year, similar to The Lord of the Rings.
As for why Abarat never wound up happening with Disney, there are several factors. The first, most obvious answer probably being the fact that we are now in 2020 and the Abarat series (which over time transformed from a four-book series into a five-book series) is still not complete. The third was published in 2011, six years after the publication of the second and it has now been nine years since then. Barker’s creative output has never died down and he has released other books in the interim, but given the amount of illustrations that go into each one, the Abarat books take time to produce and Barker’s health scare in 2011, which he has been recovering from ever since, has not made it any easier to finish the series, I’m sure.
Even back when Disney was actively developing it, the books not coming out fast enough to keep up with the development of the movies, especially considering that the protagonist does not age between each, really meant that it did not make sense to rush the films so far ahead of the source material just to meet a release date. That, coupled with the standard changes of hand within the company and new executives replacing the old ones, seemed to spell the end of Abarat at Disney.
The park remains the most interesting part of all of this, of course. According to Barker in a 2004 interview with L.A. Festival of Books, it would have been based on Babilonium, the island in which it is always six o’clock in the evening and there is a massive carnival happening all the time. It is the perfect location to be turned into an area of a theme park. The notion of not just having a ride devoted to Abarat but an entire, well, island, also makes sense considering the entertainment/theme park climate at the time. In 1999, Universal Studios saw great success with the opening of its Islands of Adventure in Florida. At the time it opened, that massive second park saw islands devoted to the Marvel super heroes, Jurassic Park, Dr. Seuss, classic comic strip characters and Greek mythology. It has since added the likes of King Kong and Harry Potter as well. Disney apparently desired to build something to rival what Universal had done with Islands and, admittedly, Babilonium would have been the absolute perfect fit for that.
In some ways, Disney attempting to build a Clive Barker-created park to compete with Universal is incredibly ironic. As already mentioned, prior to Abarat Barker had seen success with his previous children’s book, The Thief of Always. Well, there have been no shortage of attempts to try and bring that book to life in both live-action and animation, beginning in the early ‘90s. A few of those attempts had been at Universal where they, according to Barker, also planned to develop a theme park attraction to tie into the film, before he ever made his Abarat deal with Disney.
In a 1997 AOL appearance, Barker said, “By the way, for those of you who know the book, most of the action takes place in a magical house in which all things are possible. It’s a kind of playground, where your fondest wishes come true. Universal has indicated that if the film is made, they’d like to recreate this house as an attraction at their theme park.”
Just think about that for a second. We’re not talking about Halloween Horror Nights houses here, and it would be amazing enough if we were. The two biggest movie-related theme parks on the planet both, separately and at entirely different points, considered building whole theme park attractions based on Clive Barker’s work. These aren’t things that would have stuck around two months out of the year, these attractions would have been park fixtures for years and—if something like E.T. is any indication—would very possibly still be standing today. A cynical person, as we admittedly all kind of are these days, would point out how sad it is that we can’t live in the world where that happened. And yeah, it’s a major bummer.
But for all the incomprehensible, overwhelming, mind-numbing bad out there, I cannot believe we live in a world where these things were even being discussed. I cannot believe either Disney or Universal considered building attractions based on Babilonium or Thief of Always’ Holiday House, let alone the fact that Disney basically paid up front for it, they were so enthusiastic. That will never not be amazing to me.
So even though it’s a huge bummer that these park attractions never came to pass, as incredible as it could have been to walk through an island of the Abarat or navigate Holiday House, let alone to have seen their respective movie adaptations, the books are still right there. And we’re not going anywhere for awhile, folks. Barker’s world building is second to none and I think a lot of us could use that escape. Sure, it’s no tangible theme park, but that also means no lines, no overpriced food, no tiptoeing around vomit, and instead just getting swept away by some masterclass storytelling. All in all, it’s not a bad vacation to take.