A new Marvel-inspired drone show has launched at Disneyland Paris. Titled “Avengers: Power The Night,” the nighttime spectacle is set to take place over and above The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Walt Disney Studios just before closing each night from now until October.
Inspired by the park’s newly opened Avengers Campus, the eight-minute show features characters including Black Panther, Captain America and Doctor Strange using a sky-high combination of 500 drones, lights and fireworks composed by Grammy Award-winner Marco Marinangeli and recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London.
Disneyland Paris director Arnaud Feredj spent six months conceptualizing and creating the display in collaboration with France-based drone entertainment company Dronisos, who used modified Parrot drones to achieve it. D-Light, which runs before the fireworks every night (similar to the California setup, Disneyland Paris has two parks, Parc Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios).
Avengers Power The Night, Disneyland Paris
Although Feredj declined to comment on the budget, the size of the group gives some clues. “There [are] teams of lighting designers, motion designers, drone designers, SFX designers, then I worked with a scriptwriter, music producers and we were at Abbey Road to record this great [performance with] more than 70 musicians,” he said Variety.
Read on for more details from Feredj on how the night spectacle came together.
What was the starting point for ‘Avengers: Power of the Night’?
The starting point was the opening ceremony of the Avengers Campus [last July]. Our leaders at Disneyland Paris [and] it is truly appreciated all over the world [it] and the reaction of the guests was simply incredible. So I was asked to develop a show based on the look and feel of Avengers Campus. The first conversation we had [with Dronisos], I will remember forever. I said, “Guys, what did you do? [at Parc Disneyland] it’s amazing…But what you did was already six months ago, we’re going to move on.” And he was like, “Okay, let’s go!”
Everything is 3D. And we really push the boundaries. When we did the first scripts, I remember the conversation, it was like, “Okay, so it’s a 30-minute show?” We were like, “No no no no. This is an eight-minute show.” We’ll do all of this in eight minutes. And they thought we were completely crazy.
Avengers Power The Night, Disneyland Paris
Did Marvel Studios have to approve everything?
I work closely with the franchises and here at Disneyland Paris, and at Disney, we work with a lot of different franchises, so it’s been an amazing collaboration because, of course, we have so much respect for their characters, their franchise, this is their IP, and we want to display it in the best possible way. And they helped us a lot by telling us what we could do with them and how we could do it. And with the ideas we’ve had, everything you’re going to see in this show is a new kind of artwork from Marvel. It is something that has never been done before, never seen before.
The projection you will see is not at all from the movies, nor from the comics, it is something new. And when I came up with the idea, they said, “Are we sure we want to show The Avengers that way?” And actually, it was very easy to convince them because they liked the concepts. And when we talked about the drones, and they said, “Yeah, but we don’t really want to make a show just to make it look pretty.” And we’re like, “No, we’re just going to show the power of the Avengers.” And each drone segment represents the powers of the Avengers. It shows their strength, it shows why he is a real superhero.
What was the biggest creative challenge?
To be honest, I know it might sound a little cheesy, but it was just fun. To be fair, it’s not a challenge, it’s just how you bring the emotions of the movies and the comics and the entire franchise into an eight-minute show. And how do you create something so that it has a purpose and amazes people, but also has an emotional arc.
Watch a teaser for ‘Avengers: Power of the Night’ below:
