With the live-action Beauty And The Beast arriving soon, Disney has set their sights on another live action reboot of a beloved classic. This one sounds stranger. “Stranger than a woman falling in love with a monster while surrounded by talking clocks and teapots?” you ask? Yes.
The idea of a live action Dumbo already raises many questions, mostly “why?” and “how?”, but when Disney hired Tim Burton to direct, things got even weirder. Sure, he was at the helm for the massive Alice In Wonderland reboot, but that was a natural fit.
Burton has always had a love for odd stories and his style augmented an already strange tale, with Dumbo it’s hard to see how this works, and considering Burton’s recent track record is pretty poor, perhaps expecting much is setting ourselves up for disappointment.
Despite that, Deadline has reported that Will Smith is in line for a main role, presumably the title character himself. A living actor being cast as Dumbo alone sounds strange, add in the fact that in the original film the character doesn’t even speak, and things get weirder.
The recent Jungle Book reboot combined realistic CGI with human voices, so perhaps expect something similar here. Unlike The Jungle Book, Dumbo has no human characters.
It’s also been reported by that Tom Hanks has been offered the role of the antagonist in the film, though there’s still a possibility he may turn it down to star in World War II drama, The Grey Hound.
Either way, this is turning into an odd concoction of a film, as Disney begins its quest to live-action reboot all its own classics. It’s no coincidence that following the box office success of the aforementioned Jungle Book, Disney immediately green lit similar versions for The Lion King as well as Dumbo. How this will turn out, is anyones guess.
#Peace.Love.Dumbo
