Disney Steps Up Efforts to Bring “Avengers” to Parks

Walt Disney Co’s design team has increased its efforts to bring the Marvel superhero team “The Avengers” to the company’s theme parks after the film’s smashing success, the head of Disney’s parks unit said.

Speaking as Disney unveiled the final attractions of a $1 billion investment to boost its laggard Disney California Adventure park,Tom Staggs said he intends to bring “The Avengers” characters to the Anaheim resort and other parks outside the United States.

“We were hard at work on attractions using Marvel characters previously, and that work has only intensified given (the film’s) great success,” Staggs, chairman of Disney’s parks and resorts division, told Reuters in an interview at the park’s Golden Vine Winery.

“The Avengers” has sold more than $1.3 billion worth of tickets around the world. Executives andDisney’s designers, called “imagineers,” are still working out how to bring characters like The Hulk, Iron Man and Captain America to the parks. “The setting has to be right, the story has to be right. That takes a fair amount of time,” Staggs said.

Disney is contractually restricted from bringing Marvel characters to its parks in Orlando, where they are licensed to Comcast Corp’s Universal Studios.