Disney+ Orders SPACESHIP EARTH Pilot Based on EPCOT’s Iconic Ride
One of EPCOT’s most recognizable attractions could be heading from the theme park to Disney+ with a time-bending sci-fi adventure.
Disney+ has ordered a pilot for Spaceship Earth, a new TV series inspired by the classic EPCOT attraction housed inside the park’s massive geodesic sphere. Rather than simply turning the ride into a straightforward adaptation, the creative team is using its ideas about humanity, communication, technology, and history as the foundation for a much bigger story involving teenagers pulled together from different points in time.
As for what Spaceship Earth will actually be about, Disney’s official pilot logline gives us a pretty intriguing idea:
“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.”
That’s certainly a much bigger concept than sitting inside a ride vehicle and cruising through humanity’s history of communication.
Jason Fuchs is set to serve as showrunner and executive producer through Five Ten Productions. Fuchs recently co-created, co-showran, and executive produced IT: Welcome to Derry, which aired its first season in late 2025.
He’s also writing Netflix and Legendary’s live-action adaptation of My Hero Academia, while his previous screenwriting credits include Argylle, Wonder Woman, and Ice Age: Continental Drift.
Fuchs will be joined by Michael Waldron, who is executive producing through Anomaly Pictures. Waldron has plenty of experience playing around with timelines and alternate realities thanks to his work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
He developed Disney+’s Loki, wrote Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and is a co-writer on the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.
Waldron also created the Starz wrestling drama Heels, co-created Hulu’s Chad Powers starring Glen Powell, and previously wrote for Rick and Morty.
Lee Toland Krieger, whose directing credits include You, Riverdale, and Shadow & Bone, will executive produce and direct the Spaceship Earth pilot.
Adam Fishbach, known for Love, Victor and The Other Black Girl, is also executive producing alongside Adam Fasullo of Anomaly Pictures. 20th Television will produce, with Anomaly Pictures and Fishbach currently under overall deals at the studio.
Spaceship Earth has been one of EPCOT’s defining attractions since the Walt Disney World park opened in 1982. Located inside the giant sphere that serves as EPCOT’s visual centerpiece, the attraction takes guests through major stages in the development of human communication.
The ride has received numerous updates over the decades, but its core concept has remained largely intact. Guests travel through scenes exploring the progression of communication, eventually reaching inventions and technological developments such as telephones, radio, computers, and the internet.
Turning that concept into a sci-fi series about characters from different periods of history coming together actually makes a lot of sense.
The attraction already moves through time while exploring how humanity connects across generations. The show appears to be taking those ideas and building an adventure around them rather than trying to recreate the attraction scene by scene.
If Disney+ ultimately gives Spaceship Earth a full series order, it will join a long history of Disney projects inspired by theme park attractions.
The monster success story remains Pirates of the Caribbean, with the film franchise earning more than $4.5 billion worldwide. Disney has also adapted attractions into movies including Haunted Mansion, The Country Bears, which was inspired by Country Bear Jamboree, and Jungle Cruise.
Disney has tried to build something even larger around its theme park mythology before. The company previously explored an interconnected Magic Kingdom universe that would have included a Society of Explorers and Adventurers series developed by Ronald D. Moore. Those plans never made it to the screen.
Whether Spaceship Earth can finally crack the code for a Disney Parks-inspired television series remains to be seen, but there’s a lot of material here to play with.
The EPCOT attraction covers thousands of years of human development, and the pilot’s past-and-future setup opens the door to characters, locations, and periods that could stretch well beyond anything seen on the actual ride.
The project also arrives while Disney+ is showing increased interest in developing shows through traditional pilots. The streamer recently ordered a pilot for a reboot of The Mickey Mouse Club along with pilots based on The Last Kids on Earth and Aquamarine.
Disney+ has additionally picked up Afterlife with Archie as a series after the project previously received a script-to-series commitment.
For now, Spaceship Earth only has a pilot order, so there’s no guarantee we’ll actually get to watch a full season. Still, this is one of the more interesting Disney attraction adaptations to come along. Disney is digging into one of EPCOT’s foundational ideas and turning it into a large-scale time-travel adventure.
If the creative team can capture some of the imagination, optimism, and fascination with human progress that have defined Spaceship Earth for more than four decades, this could end up being a pretty cool addition to Disney+.