Leslie Iwerks on Turning Disney's Storytellers Into "Worldbuilders"

Filmmaker Leslie Iwerks has spent decades chronicling how Disney’s parks come together behind the scenes, and her latest documentary, “Disney Worldbuilders,” turns that lens toward the storytellers who dream up the worlds before Imagineers ever break ground. The film premieres at the D23 fan event on August 16 before streaming on Disney+ starting August 20, featuring extended conversations with figures including Bob Iger, James Cameron, Jennifer Lee, Jared Bush, Kevin Feige and Jon Favreau.

Iwerks told Variety the project grew out of a recurring theme she noticed while interviewing her subjects: nearly every one of them traced their creative instincts back to childhood visits to Disneyland, describing a formative moment when the park convinced them that imagined worlds could become tangible. That idea, drawn from Walt Disney’s own belief that the park would never be finished as long as imagination persisted, became the throughline connecting the documentary’s profiles of directors and executives across animation, live-action and theme park design.

The film traces how franchises including “Frozen,” “Avatar,” “Zootopia” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have moved beyond the screen into physical lands and attractions, and how those attractions, in turn, have shaped the stories that came after them. One sequence follows Lee, the former chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation, to Disneyland Paris earlier this year as she watched Arendelle take physical form with the opening of World of Frozen. Iwerks described the exchange between film and park as a two-way creative relationship rather than a simple pipeline from movie to merchandise.

Iwerks comes to the project with a personal connection to Disney’s history: her grandfather, Ub Iwerks, animated alongside Walt Disney and helped create Mickey Mouse, while her father worked as a camera technician and inventor at the studio. Her earlier credits include “The Pixar Story” and “The Imagineering Story,” both of which similarly examined the mechanics behind Disney’s creative output.

Iwerks said she hopes the documentary encourages young artists who assume the industry’s biggest names had an easy path in. She pointed to Lee, Bush and Feige as examples of creators who built their careers through repeated setbacks before reaching positions of influence, framing their trajectories as proof that similar opportunities remain open to the next generation of storytellers.