Legendary actor Danny DeVito will step insideThe Haunted Mansion. A new live-action movie based on the popular Disney theme park attraction, the family comedy also stars LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, and Rosario Dawson. Justin Simien (Dear White People) will direct using a screenplay by Katie Dippold. Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich are producing via Rideback.
In the movie,Danny DeVitowill play a “smug professor,” and that’s all that’s been divulged about his character at this time. Full plot details haven’t been revealed forHaunted Mansion, but per THR, the movie “follows a mother and her son who come across a mansion that is more than it seems while being orbited by various characters key to undressing the spooky mystery.”
This is certainly phenomenal casting, as DeVito is a popular and beloved actor who will have fans tuning in to catch this next performance. Batman fans will know him well for his role as Oswald Cobblepot inBatman Returns, a character he will soon pay homage to with a new comic book story written by the actor. Some of his other big roles includeMatilda,Hercules, andDumbo. We last saw him on the big screen in 2019’sJumanji: The Next Level, and he continues to star in the hit comedy seriesIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Many of DeVito’s fans will also fondly remember him starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1988 comedyTwins. It was recently announced that DeVito will team back up with Schwarzenegger and director Ivan Reitman for aTwinssequel, this time introducing Tracy Morgan as another brother of the pair. Additionally, DeVito has also been set for the cast of the retirement home noirSniffwith Morgan Freeman, Al Pacino, and Helen Mirren.
In 2003,Disneyturned out their first adaptationThe Haunted Mansion. That version starred Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Wallace Shawn, and Jennifer Tilly in a comedy about a family who vacations to a manor in the Louisiana bayou that turns out to be haunted. The movie fell well short of expectations with abysmal reviews, and it’s curious as to why Disney wants to roll the dice with anotherHaunted Mansionmovie.
In any case, there have been efforts for years to get anotherHaunted Mansionmovie off the ground. At one point,Guillermo del Toro was attached to the project, but it never seemed to stop just spinning its wheels with the filmmaker involved. There were reports of Ryan Gosling joining the cast several years back, but that iteration of the project fizzled out. Things moved much more quickly when writer Katie Dippold and director Justin Simien boarded the project.
This project coming to fruition so quickly also put amajor dent in plans for the sequel Wedding Crashers 2to happen. Owen Wilson was reportedly all set to go with plans to start production on the movie imminently, but the project was postponed indefinitely when Wilson was offered and accepted his role inHaunted Mansion. Many fans still hope Wilson will return to that project after wrappingHaunted Mansion, but it might be hard to get everybody’s schedules back on the same page once again.
The Haunted Mansionstarted production this month in New Orleans and Atlanta. As of now, Disney has not yet set an official release date. This news comes to us fromThe Hollywood Reporter.
