Disney has reportedly hired Tim Burton to direct a pointless live-action version of Dumbo.
During an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Sean Bailey, the president of production at Walt Disney Pictures, confirmed that Burton was hired for the project. It will be a live-action/CG hybrid and is in the very early stages of development.
“It’s a big world,” Bailey said of the project.
This has to be the most pointless live-action venture Disney has taken on. The original 1941 film is one of the greatest animated features in the Disney canon, despite a running time of just 64 minutes. How the studio can expand on that is anyone’s guess.
Dumbo was based on a children’s book written by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl. The story, as everyone knows, centers on a misfit elephant with floppy ears who learns how to fly.
Burton helmed Disney’s 2010 international smash hit Alice In Wonderland. That kicked off the studio’s current trend of adapting its animated films into live action movies. Maleficent, based on Sleeping Beauty was released last year and this week sees the release of Cinderella. The Jungle Book will be out next year and a new Beauty and the Beast is slated for 2017.
A new Alice movie, Through The Looking Glass, is currently in production and is set to open in May 2016.
It’s not clear when Burton will get to start Dumbo. He directed Big Eyes last year and his next project is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
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