Disney’s Haunted Mansion opens up for business this summer, and a brand new featurette video that was just released this morning further previews the family horror film.
“I wanted everything to feel as if it came right off the ride,” director Justin Simien (Dear White People, Bad Hair) explains in the new featurette video. “What we wanted to do was preserve the details that fans remember and expand the universe around them.”
Disney’s new live action Haunted Mansion movie will be releasing in theaters on July 28, 2023, and it’s been rated “PG-13” for “thematic elements and scary action.”
Justin Simien (Dear White People, Bad Hair) directed the new live action adaptation of the popular, long-running Disney theme park attraction that’s home to 999 haunts.
LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, and Danny DeVito star, with Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota and Jared Leto as the Hatbox Ghost.
Winona Ryder, Dan Levy, and Hasan Minhaj will also appear in the new movie.
“In this mysterious adventure, a doctor (Dawson) and her 9-year-old son (Chase Dillon), looking to start a new life, move into a strangely affordable mansion in New Orleans, only to discover that the place is much more than they bargained for. Desperate for help, they contact a priest (Wilson), who, in turn, enlists the aid of a widowed scientist-turned failed-paranormal expert (Stanfield), a French Quarter psychic (Haddish) and a crotchety historian (DeVito).”
The dark ride attraction, which launched in 1969 and is still going strong today at Disney parks, “sees theme park guests go inside a spooky and creepy manor that has a wide array of supernatural frights. It also features a graveyard’s worth of characters.” The most popular characters include Hatbox Ghost, Madame Leota, The Phantom and the Hitchhiking Ghosts.
Katie Dippold (Ghostbusters 2016) is writing the new movie’s script for Disney.