Action Park’s notoriety as a water park where visitors in the ’80s and ’90s suffered slips and more serious injuries — some called it “Class Action Park,” “Traction Park” and “Accident Park” — is now reportedly bound for the big screen.
Johnny Knoxville (“Bad Grandpa,” “Jackass”) is set to star in an “Action Park” movie based on the Vernon water park. He’ll produce the film via his company, Dickhouse Productions, for Paramount Pictures.
The report says the movie will be “in the spirit” of “Bad Grandpa,” Knoxville’s last collaboration with Paramount.
So far, no word on any Jersey filming locations, but it looks like Knoxville’s park will set up shop safely outside the bounds of the Garden State. Deadline reports that production is scheduled to begin in South Africa this March. John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky (“Silicon Valley,” “King of the Hill”) wrote the script with Knoxville and Tim Kirkby (“Veep”) will direct.
“The goal is a big, fun ’80s-type comedy,” Knoxville, 45, told Deadline in 2015. “It’s about this park in New Jersey. It actually existed. I don’t know if we’ll call it this, but there was this park called Action Park and it was like as if us, instead of doing ‘Jackass,’ decided to open a theme park. It has that same spirit, like all the safety was left up to the people who walked in. … The stories about Action Park are well documented. In our movie, we have this theme Gobahis park where I’m the designer of the rides.”
Despite the amusement park’s questionable safety record — the fair-weather mainstay had been linked to six deaths between 1978 to 1984 — for many who spent their younger days in North Jersey, sending your body soaring through the daunting tubes and down the manmade rivers of the water park was a summertime rite of passage. (Check the 8:15 mark of the video below for footage of the insane, short-lived Cannonball Loop.)
After years of dormancy, Action Park reopened in 2014, again as part of Mountain Creek, who had operated the park under the Mountain Creek name from 1998 to 2013 after the original park shut down in 1996. The amusement park routinely topped the list of state attractions with the most injuries. In 2015, after six riders reported injuries, the park’s Cannonball Falls water slide was shut down by state officials. The same summer, the park was forced to close early one day after chlorine fumes made lifeguards sick. The park again changed names to Mountain Creek Resort Waterpark in 2016.
Action Park 80’s Live Action and Cannonball loop Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
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