Will Smith stars for Dumbo 'live-action' reboot?

By La Volpe | Jan 12, 2017 01:18 PM EST

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Tim Burton announced a few years back that he was developing a live-action Dumbo for Walt Disney Pictures. We haven't heard from the project since then until now, that "Bad Boys" actor Will Smith will star the project.

In a report by Deadline, the Oscar-nominated actor is being targeted by Disney for a major role in the film based in the 1941 animation about a big-eared circus elephant. He would play the father of children who form a bond with Dumbo. Variety also reports that Tom Hanks is to be the movie's villain.

Tim Burton, who scored his biggest box-office hit to date with 2010's Alice in Wonderland, was originally devoted to the film in 2015 and now the studio is "aggressively" pushing the film towards production. The script comes from Ehren Kruger whose credits include Scream 3 and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

When the project was formally announced, Walt Disney Pictures president of production Sean Bailey said "It's a big world," which suggests that this version of the story will go well past the limits of the original. We have also heard that the new film "will add a unique family story that parallels Dumbo's journey" and "expanse and deepen the circus aspect of the story." So we're guessing that Will Smith would be playing the Circus worker/father of this family and not voicing the title character of Dumbo.

Disney has been doing pretty well with their live-action adaptations of animated classic, and so far it seems they have been staying pretty faithful to the animated versions. Tim Burton's reimaging of Alice in Wonderland was an extreme reinterpretation of the classic story, and while it was a huge financial success worldwide (enough to plan a sequel), still it failed to connect with audiences.

It has been a less successful run for Will Smith, whose last film Collateral Beauty largely received negative reviews and registered just $29 million in the U.S. box office. He is next to be seen in the Netflix action fantasy series, Bright, where he plays a cop partnered with an orc and the sequel Bad Boys for Life.  

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