From Batuu to a movie theater near you? At the recent INBOUND conference, Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D’Amaro spoke about the importance of storytelling at Disney. D’Amaro talked about key pillars of Disney and how they create, not only for their theme parks, but across the company. Of course, D’Amaro is the theme parks guy, so he often brought the points back to how they’re implemented within Disney’s theme parks around the world. Toward the end of the presentation, D’Amaro brought out the very popular BDX droids. D’Amaro said that the playful, lifelike droids embody the storytelling principles at Disney, and then he hinted that there might be something more in store for the droids.
BDX Droids in a Star Wars Movie
D’Amaro talked about the importance of storytelling in theme parks, especially the ability for Imagineers to connect guests to their favorite Disney stories, characters, and locations. When discussing theme parks, Disney typically uses a one-way pipeline from the big screen to the theme parks. Of course, there are some amazing examples of how the theme parks fed into the big screen, most notably with Pirates of the Caribbean, but on the whole, the IP usually starts at the movie theater or on Disney+ streaming before it is implemented into the theme parks.
When talking about the creation of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and other popular IP lands like the World of Frozen in Hong Kong, D’Amaro said that Imagineers create a place where guests can play and enjoy characters and stories in an immersive environment. However, in the case of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the location was not something we’d ever seen before in a movie or TV show, yet it felt distinctly Star Wars.
As the land continues to evolve, Imagineers have looked for ways to breathe life into the land, and one of the ways that they’re doing that is by introducing new characters. At first, Disney brought some “out of timeline” characters to the land to bring familiar faces to Batuu. Then, Walt Disney Imagineering and Disney Research have teamed up to create a truly free-roaming bipedal robotic character.
Themed to a BD Unit explorer droid from the Star Wars franchise, lucky guests visiting Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland were able to see the BDX droids during a 1-day test by Imagineers in the land about a year ago. A trio of bipedal droids roamed Galaxy’s Edge as part of the Imagineering test which included the droids exploring and interacting with the land.
Imagineering says designing a bipedal robotic character with the balance and abilities of these robots is impressive, but that they took it a step further by combining procedural animation, modular hardware, and reinforcement learning to program a walking character capable of complex gaits such as a strut, prance, sneak, tromp, shuffle, hustle, saunter or meander. Imagineering says that the robots are capable of learning in months, not years, and that the ability to have a new robot design learn to imitate artistic motion in a simulation environment before it’s being built advances Imagineering’s innovation pipeline.
The end result is a character that is not only believable, but one that has personality and one that connects with guests of all ages. The droids were so popular that Disney brought them back into Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge for the Season of the Force event this summer. Now, they look to be headed to the big screen. Here’s what Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D’Amaro said about the droids making it into a Star Wars movie:
These are relatable characters, they’re created by courageous innovators that help us believe in the story that we’re telling. And, you know, it wouldn’t actually surprise me if we were to see these guys in a Star Wars movie someday. I bet [the BDX droids] are going to make it. And that would be then a full circle moment for us, that is for sure.
Selfishly, we’d love to see the BDX droids make their way to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The droids are not only an impressive piece of immersive technology that guests would love, but they are also the realization of a longtime promise from Imagineering to create a land full of roaming droids.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
