Production has officially begun on Disney‘s live action remake of their 1941 animated classic, Dumbo. Tim Burton is directing the update, from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger. The latest in a long line of live action remakes of their popular animated fair, Dumbo is currently scheduled to arrive in theaters on March 29th, 2019. The plot synopsis for this redo is as follows, courtesy of Dark Horizons…
The story begins with Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), a former circus star who finds his life turned upside down when he returns from the war. Circus owner Max Medici (Danny DeVito) enlists Holt to care for a newborn elephant whose oversized ears make him a laughing stock in an already struggling circus.
But when Holt’s children (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins) discover that Dumbo can fly, persuasive entrepreneur V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) and an aerial artist named Colette Marchant (Eva Green) swoop in to make the peculiar pachyderm a star.
I still remain mixed on the majority of these live action updates. On the one hand, I loved David Lowery’s update of Pete’s Dragon and also really enjoyed Kenneth Branagh’s take on Cinderella. On the other hand, I was not overly impressed with Disney’s reboots of Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book, or Beauty and the Beast. Furthermore, the two Alice in Wonderland films were downright awful, with the first being directed by Burton himself.
Given that I still like, if not love, the majority of Tim Burton’s work, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here. He has a great cast and interesting material at his fingertips here. I just hope the results are closer to the entertaining thrills of Big Fish and Frankenweenie than they are the grating antics of Alice in Wonderland or the blandness of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. C’mon Tim, don’t let me down, especially now that you’re working with Keaton and DeVito again!
