Catching up with Universal's 'King Kong' attraction and musical extravaganza 'Creature' (HW)

By R. Kinsey Lowe

We slipped up. Or more accurately, I did. A couple days back I neglected to mention Universal Studios Hollywood's announcement about the King Kong attraction that will open in 2010, which first came to my attention via Deadline Hollywood Daily. It's not as if that news didn't turn up just about everywhere else, and I've been concentrating on movie and TV news and information coming out of the Cannes Film Festival.

Now that I have come across a Universal Studios attraction that will arrive much sooner than the giant gorilla and his dinosaur encounter, it seemed I'd better get up to speed.

The show in question is the theme park musical extravaganza "Creature From the Black Lagoon," set to open July 1 this year, as previously pointed out on Dread Central, among other places.

Universal promises: "The 25-ft. Creature and signature Rita ship measuring 18.5 feet in length x 8.5 feet in width x 16 feet in height, along with the elaborate state-of-the-art special effects, surround sound, and detailed set pieces, will wow audiences. This unexpectedly outrageous, bizarrely romantic, melodic and often outlandishly comic adventure will leave guests of all ages quite entertained!"

Universal described next year's Kong as a "4-D" adventure, which would seem to defy the laws of physics, but the Creature feature alert didn't describe any extra-dimensional aspects other than those aforementioned of linear measurement. Perhaps a little ironic because the original 1954 feature was presented theatrically in 3-D.

With the increased attention to 3-D these days, the remake's attached director Breck Eisner noted earlier this year in a post on Bloody Disgusting that "we weren�t [considering 3-D] before, but the landscape in the last year has changed. You expect it to be. People have forgotten the original is, but they�ll remember it once the next one comes out.�