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Tiffany Haddish & LaKeith Stanfield looking to move into Disney's Haunted Mansion
The Haunted Mansion movie, an adaptation of the popular Disney theme park ride, is looking to scare up a rebooted cast. Comedian Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip, Keanu, Solar Opposites) and Oscar-nominee LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah, Sorry to Bother You, Yasuke) are in negotiations to star in the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Dear White People's Justin Simien is on board to direct in his big-budget studio debut, from a script by Ghostbusters scribe Katie Dippold.
The Haunted Mansion theme park ride is a bastion of Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Those that brave entering the very haunted-looking house travel in a "Doom Buggy" car that takes them to rooms with floating heads, hitchhiking ghosts, a murderous bride, and other spooky things.
The movie will follow the story of a family who moves into a mansion that happens to be haunted. Stanfield would play a widower who once believed in ghosts but is now a jaded tour guide in the New Orleans French Quarter. Haddish would play a psychic hired to commune with the dead, though we don’t know yet if her character is a “real” clairvoyant or not in the film.
This isn’t the first time Disney has adapted the popular theme park attraction into a movie. In 2003, the company put out The Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy. With a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 14% and an audience score of 30%, however, the movie didn’t fare well critically or commercially.
With Disney’s movie adaptation of Jungle Cruise — another popular theme park attraction — coming out this week, however, it appears the company is dipping its toes back into making films out of theme park rides, as it did so successfully with its Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
We don’t know the timing on when this Haunted Mansion movie will come out, though THR is reporting it will begin shooting in Louisiana this fall.
In the meantime, to get your fix of hitchhiking ghosts, you can always watch ride-throughs of the theme park attraction on YouTube or even — if you’re brave — give the 2003 version of the movie another shot.
