As noted theme park thinker Brodie Bruce once remarked in Mallrats, “EVERYONE wants Mr Toad’s Wild Ride.” Disney definitely seems to want it, even though the company scrapped the Disney World Florida version back in 1998. Mr Toad's Wild Ride still exists in the California park and, if the Mouse House has its way, will soon hit international cinema screens.

We’ve known for a while that the company quite fancied riding the Pirates Of The Caribbean success wave, and has been raiding the theme park grounds for other ideas. Those included The Matterhorn (which is becoming more of a generic action tale) and of course the 2003 Eddie Murphy misfire The Haunted Mansion.

Mr Toad's Wild Ride, which launched at Disneyland in 1955, is based on Disney’s 1949 adaptation of The Wind In The Willows and its cast of beloved animals characters, led by the irrepresible Mr Toad. That means the concept has gone from book to film to ride and back to film again. If there’s a novelisation of the eventual movie, it’s possible the fabric of the universe will tear itself apart and Cthulu will emerge into our dimension.

Throwing caution and fear of tentacled horrors to the wind, Disney is putting Tron Legacy producer Justin Springer in charge of overseeing a new CG/live-action blend of parp-parp car action and scheming weasels. He’s already got ads / music video director Pee Candeland working on the idea and writers are being invited in to pitch their concepts. Hey, it could be huge! We just hope they find a way to get The Frog Song in there somewhere. No real reason. Just because there's an amphibian link.