According to Deadline, Disney and director Tim Burton’s upcoming live-action Dumbo movie is currently in negotiations to cast another Burton regular in Danny DeVito, who previously appeared in Batman Returns, Mars Attacks! and Big Fish. DeVito would play Medici, who runs a small circus that gets taken over by an evil big top circus run by the film’s main villain, Vandemere.
Eva Green, who previously worked with Burton on both Dark Shadows and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, will play one of three human leads in the feature.
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Dumbo, released in 1941, marked Disney’s fourth full-length animated feature and told the story of a young circus elephant who, mocked for his enormous ears, discovers that he can actually use them to fly. The new film, which is planned to blend CGI and live action, will feature a screenplay by Transformers scribe Ehren Kruger.
Disney has been finding quite a bit of success lately with live-action takes on their classic films. Burton’s own Alice in Wonderland took in more than a billion at the international box office, with the studio’s most recent live-action adaptation, Jon Favreau‘s The Jungle Book, having brought in more than $966 million at the worldwide box office.
DeVito, who continues to portray Frank Reynolds on the hit FX comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, will next be heard in the animated family film Animal Crackers, and has also directed the thriller St. Sebastian.
Would you like to see Danny DeVito in the live-action Dumbo movie? Are you looking forward to the film? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
