Glob Theater's Clocktower Emerges From Scaffolding, and Randy Newman Wrote the Song the Show Is Named After

By entgrove · September 1, 2026 · Updated September 29, 2026

Scaffolding has come down from the clocktower and entrance facade of the Glob Theater at Disney's Hollywood Studios, revealing rebuilt brickwork and the posts for a marquee advertising Welcome to Monstropolis! With Sulley & Mike, a show named for a new Randy Newman song that Disney says is his first for a theme park. Oversized riveted gold braces have gone up on the former Gonzo's Royal Flush restroom next door. Parts of Monstropolis open in 2027 around a celebration called H.U.M.A.N. Day.

The scaffolding is off. The clocktower and main entrance facade of the Glob Theater at Disney's Hollywood Studios are visible again for the first time in months, revealing rebuilt and repainted brickwork on the building that spent three decades as the MuppetVision 3D theater. The reveal is not the finished product (deliberate gaps in the brick mark where themed elements still have to go), but it is the clearest look yet at how Monstropolis intends to reshape a landmark rather than replace it. Across the way, the former Gonzo's Royal Flush restroom building has grown oversized riveted gold braces along its upper facade, a sign that even the land's utility buildings are being rebuilt as monster architecture.

What came down and what changed

Crews updated and painted the brickwork before the scaffolding began coming down in late August. The clocktower is now completely exposed, and the changes go well beyond a coat of paint.

• The Gonzo figure that perched on the tower is gone, the most visible loss for longtime Muppets fans
• The tower's fake window shutters, a wooden post and the beige trim have all been removed, which is why the brickwork needed refreshing in the first place
• The cornice around the top of the tower has been altered
• Gaps remain in the brick along the sides and near the base; those are mounting points for themed elements still to be installed

Above the theater's main entrance, large metal posts now protrude from the brick wall. Those are structural, not decorative: they are the attachment points for a new marquee, which will cover much of the brickwork behind them. The brick above the entrance currently looks splotchy, though paint may simply still have been drying.

The marquee will advertise a new show

That marquee is the piece that turns the building over. It will advertise the theater's new production, Welcome to Monstropolis! With Sulley & Mike. The Glob Theater keeps the shape and bones of the building that housed Jim Henson's MuppetVision 3D from 1991 until its closure, but the story it tells out front will be a Monsters, Inc. one.

Concept art for the finished theater shows the clock surrounded by an eye element, a banner hanging below it, and gutters running down the sides of the tower, details that explain some of those unfilled gaps in the brick.

A finished clock tower with an unfinished marquee is a useful read on sequencing: the structural and decorative work on the building shell is ahead of the signage and show-specific fittings, which is the normal order for a Disney theater conversion.

Randy Newman wrote the song the show is named after

Disney's own account of the show puts a name on the soundtrack. "Welcome to Monstropolis" is a new song by Disney Legend Randy Newman, who scored the Monsters, Inc. films, and Disney says it is the first song he has composed for a Disney theme park. The show at the Glob takes its title from the song, and guests will hear it when the land opens to humans next year.

Chris Beatty, a vice president at Walt Disney Imagineering, described the premise at D23: the monsters in the show introduce humans to Monstropolis and make the case that the two sides are more alike than either expected. "Mike and Sulley will be our hosts," he said, with Sulley working on a small, homespun show and Mike, the showman of the pair, holding "a few surprises up his sleeve that he thinks will bring down the house. Hopefully not literally."

Newman has written for Disney and Pixar films for decades without writing for one of the parks, which is what makes the commission worth noting. It also raises the stakes on the marquee: the building has stood blank since August, and the signage is the piece that will make it read as the Glob Theater rather than as a repainted MuppetVision.

Riveted gold braces on the old Gonzo's Royal Flush

The first sign came at the end of August, when a gold-brown element appeared near the roof of the restroom building on the side facing the Glob. Several gold metal pieces now run along the building's upper facade, riveted and oversized in a way that reads as industrial bracing scaled up for creatures rather than people. They are exaggerated structural elements rather than functional ones. That is the visual grammar Monstropolis needs: the city in Monsters, Inc. is built out of heavy plate, rivets and pipework, and the joke only works if the proportions are wrong on purpose.

Crews remain active across multiple levels of scaffolding on the structure. Above the construction walls, the building's water tower and the tooth-like decorations installed earlier are both visible. The concrete columns marking the entrance to Monstropolis are still exposed, with scaffolding filling much of the area beyond them.

Choosing to invest this much detail in a restroom building is itself the story. Restrooms are the first thing value-engineered out of a theme park budget, and Disney's Hollywood Studios has plenty of buildings that were simply repainted when their land changed identity. Rebuilding this one with custom metalwork suggests Monstropolis is being treated as a full environment rather than a re-skin of the Muppets Courtyard.

Not finished yet

Scaffolding still stands in front of the theater's entrance and along the far wall. On the side of the building closest to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, the brickwork currently carries several different color schemes, almost certainly paint tests run before the clocktower and entrance facade were finished. Those walls should be repainted to match.

What else is confirmed for Monstropolis

A great deal about the land is already known from D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, where Disney named the dining venues and shops, named the show at the Glob, showed the load area and launch of the suspended door coaster, and previewed Harryhausen's, the sushi restaurant from the film where Mike takes Celia on their date. Disney says the sushi there will be prepared by a tentacled Audio-Animatronics chef, and that the menu runs well beyond sushi. Archie's Scare Pig Pizza replaces PizzeRizzo, with a Monsters University Alumni Club alongside it, and the Scareporium is the land's souvenir shop. The land's main thoroughfare, Dark Avenue, will lead to the Laugh Factory housing the marquee attraction.

Disney has also given the opening a story to hang on. In the land's fiction, a Department of Human Relations invites humans into the monster city for the first time, and the invitation has a name: H.U.M.A.N. Day, short for Humans Understanding Monsters Are Nice. The city's newspaper, the Monstropolis Horn, carries the announcement. On the construction side, Disney's own update is a single line: steel is rising behind the walls.

Monstropolis is being built on the former Muppets Courtyard. For Disney's Hollywood Studios it is the third land-scale addition in under a decade, after Toy Story Land and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, and it lands in the middle of the park rather than on its edge. That central position is why the construction walls have been so hard for guests to walk around all year.

Monstropolis opens in phases starting in 2027

The concrete date to hold onto: parts of Monstropolis open in 2027, not all at once. Disney's own description of that first opening is the theater show with Mike and Sulley, Harryhausen's and Archie's Scare Pig Pizza, while work continues on the door coaster, the land's headline attraction, which follows later. That phasing is why the Glob Theater matters so much right now; a walk-in show venue at the front of the land is exactly the kind of thing that opens ahead of a coaster, and it is where guests will first hear Newman's song.

The next visible milestones on this corner of the site are the marquee going up on those metal posts and the entrance columns being clad. Until then, the metalwork on the old Gonzo's Royal Flush building is the best available preview of what the finished street will look like. Anyone walking past that corner of the park this autumn should look up at the clocktower: the gaps in the brick are where the eyes go.