The grim grinning hosts are coming out to socialize again.
20 years after Disney’s first attempt to turn the beloved Disneyland attraction the Haunted Mansion into a feature, the company is trying it again. The new version, also titled Haunted Mansion, will arrive in theaters on March 10, 2023. At present, it faces no competition for that release date, although the long-awaited Dungeons & Dragons movie is currently scheduled to open in theaters the weekend before and Timothy Olyphant’s new verison of Wonka will open a week later on March 17.
This new Haunted Mansion will be directed by Dear White People’s Justin Simien and star Tiffany Haddish, Lakeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, and Rosario Dawson. Haddish supposedly plays “ a psychic hired to commune with the dead” while Stanfield “will play a widower who once believed in the supernatural, but is now a rather lifeless tour guide in New Orleans’s French Quarter.” The script for the film was written by Katie Dippold, whose previous projects include numerous Melissa McCarthy comedies like The Heat, Spy and 2016’s female-driven Ghostbusters reboot.
The original Haunted Mansion movie from 2003 was directed by Rob Minkoff. It starred Eddie Murphy as a workaholic real estate agent who tries to sell a property that turns out to be a, you guessed, haunted mansion. The cast of that film also included Terence Stamp, Wallace Shawn, Marsha Thomason, and Jennifer Tilly as the Mansion ride’s famous Madame Leota. The movie got mostly negative reviews and did so-so at the box office; over the next decade or so Disney forgot about the film and focused on their massive grossing Pirates of the Caribbean series instead.
But then Pirates got bogged down in bad sequels and now Disney has returned to the Haunted Mansion again. Given the lukewarm response to the first film it’s probably a decent choice for a remake. People love the ride and know the concept, but feel little affection for the first version. We’ll see how they react to the new one next year.
10 Disney Movies That Deserve Their Own Rides
Here are 10 Disney movies that we think would make particularly great theme park rides, whether it be a dark ride, flume ride, or rollercoaster.
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