Eva Green

This live-action adaptation of the animated classic is twice as long as the original with a lot more human characters.

The floppy-eared elephant is getting a dark live-action remake from Tim Burton.

Tim Burton has officially begun production on his live-action version of Dumbo, the most depressing Disney movie of all time. (Okay, maybe that’s up for debate, but this movie wrecked me as a child.) We’ve heard rumors about the cast for a while now, from Colin Farrell to Danny DeVito and Michael Keaton, and they’re all true! The casting news, along with some plot details and an official release date was announced today during Disney’s live-action panel at the D23 Expo.

Disney’s live-action Dumbo remake has been officially upgraded from another basic Tim Burton project that elicits little more than a shrug to a full-out curiosity worthy of an eyebrow raise. Between the casting of Eva Green and Danny DeVito, and the almost-casting of Will Smith, and now the potential casting of Colin Farrell, maybe there’s more to this movie than flying elephants — like, is Dumbo sexy now or what?

Tim Burton’s Dumbo movie hasn‘t gotten off to a great start, with Will Smith joining and then exiting the project within weeks. Since then, we haven’t heard much about the movie, which has been gestating for a while, but now the cast is looking to acquire another big name: that of Eva Green, star of Penny Dreadful and of Burton’s latest film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

The minds behind Showtime’s Penny Dreadful adamantly insisted they’d made the choice to end the series after Season 3, even as viewers going in had no idea they were witnessing the end. Well, it turns out they weren’t! Penny Dreadful will return in 2017 after all, at least in the form of a comic continuation that aptly reflects the series’ namesake.

Here’s something you may not know about me: it takes a tremendous amount of willpower for me to not spend the first paragraph of every Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children gushing about Eva Green. Nearly every time I write about this movie, I promise myself I’m just going to share a few thoughts about the clips and teasers that have been released so far, and instead, I hijack my own post to sing the praises of one of my favorite actors. Look, I did it again! I am not a strong man.

Tim Burton has been a bit hit or miss in his later years (to say the least), but his latest film looks like it might possibly, hopefully be the closest thing to a return to form since Frankenweenie. A new featurette encourages that optimism by taking you inside the fantastical world of Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children — come for Eva Green, stay for charmingly creepy little kids in burlap sacks.

Last night saw Showtime’s so-called “psychosexual horror drama” Penny Dreadful concluding its third season with a shocking demise, but much moreso than one of the central characters. It seems Showtime has officially decided to end Penny Dreadful at Season 3, to which creator John Logan addresses fans and explains the reasoning behind Penny Dreadful‘s end.

Ender’s Game sputtered out and he didn’t land the role of Marvel’s new Spider-Man, so Asa Butterfield’s latest stab at franchise immortality will come in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Based on a best-selling novel by Ransom Riggs, the premise is sort of a Tim Burton spin on X-Men, with a house of strange and quirkily gifted children who live apart from society that doesn’t understand their abilities. And, yes, if this movie is a hit, Riggs has already written two Miss Peregrine sequels, Hollow City and Library of Souls. In other words, there’s nothing peculiar about Hollywood’s interest in this material.