EXCLUSIVE: Rosario Dawson has been set to join LaKeith Stanfield and Tiffany Haddish in Haunted Mansion, Disney’s latest live-action film based on one of its theme park attractions. Justin Simien is directing a script from Katie Dippold, and the pic is now gearing up to begin shooting next month.
The plot is under wraps and comes after Disney’s 2003 moderately successful movie based on the Disneyland and Walt Disney World attraction that starred Eddie Murphy. That came the same year as another Disney theme park ride-turned-movie arrived: that would be Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, which spawned four sequels and grossed more than $4.5 billion at the global box office.
Most recently, Disney took another ride adapting Jungle Cruise, with the Dwayne Johnson-Emily Blunt action adventure movie finally hitting big screens at the end of July, grossing $194M worldwide to date in theaters (it also bowed on Disney PVOD) and finishing fourth overall among the top domestic summer releases. A sequel is already in the works.
The Haunted Mansion attraction debuted in 1969 at Disneyland. Guests take a slow ride inside a spooky and creepy manor that includes the spirit of psychic medium Madame Leota, the skeletal Bride and the cloaked Hatbox Ghost.
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Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich, who produced Disney’s live-action hit Aladdin, are producing Haunted Mansion via their Rideback banner, with Rideback’s Nick Reynolds executive producing.
Dawson, who starred on USA Network’s Briarpatch and played Jedi Ahsoka Tano on Disney+’s The Mandalorian, most recently was on the big screen in David Oyelowo’s The Water Man and is up next in the Hulu limited series Dopesick which bows October 13.
She’s repped by CAA and Untitled Entertainment.