Disney has been granted a new patent for the HoloTile floor, the moving floor co-invented by Disney Imagineer Lanny Smoot, and this one is built for making movies. U.S. Patent 12,761,723, granted October 13, 2026, describes a floor that keeps a performer walking in front of a camera and a digital background without ever leaving the stage.
The patent is titled “Modular Omnidirectional Actuated Floors Providing a Reconfigurable Video Production Environment.” Smoot is listed as an inventor alongside Frank D. Mezzatesta III, Jack Wetherell and Robert J. Bristow. It describes a stage with a camera and a screen showing a digital background. As the performer walks, the floor keeps them in the shot, and the system can shift the background, the camera and the props to match. A performer could walk any distance in any direction without running out of stage. The grant was first reported by Crowd Levels.
That fits the kind of filmmaking Disney already does. Industrial Light & Magic’s StageCraft LED stage, first used on The Mandalorian, lets actors perform in front of a digital world instead of a green screen. The limit is floor space. A floor like this could let an actor cross an entire desert planet on one small stage. Disney has not said whether it plans to use HoloTile on a production.
Theme parks are in the paperwork too. A related Disney patent, U.S. 12,386,413, was granted in August 2025 for an interactive version. It pairs the floor with a screen, projection or headset and with sensors that track where a guest is standing, then moves the guest to match what they see. The tiles can also rise and fall to create changes in height, and the patent mentions moving ride vehicles and gaming objects and using the floor in theatrical productions. Disney has not announced an attraction that uses it.
HoloTile started as a virtual reality project. Smoot’s first patent for the floor was filed in 2017 and granted in 2019, and Disney first showed the floor publicly in January 2024. A prototype is now on display at the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum.
We saw HoloTile in action at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event in Anaheim in August 2024, at the Disney Research display. Alongside the full-size floor sat a smaller tabletop version where Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker figures battled across the tiles. That little Star Wars duel makes more sense now. A floor that can move people and objects on cue is a filmmaking tool first, and the new patent spells that out. Theme parks look like the second stop, with a walk-through or stage show where the floor carries guests through a story. Smoot already holds more than 100 patents, and he keeps finding new jobs for the same idea.
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