According to One Take News, Golden Globe winner Jamie Lee Curtis has officially signed on for a key supporting role in Walt Disney Studios’ new live-action film adaptation of the Haunted Mansion, based on one of its most popular theme park attractions. The outlet’s sources note that Curtis will be portraying the role of Madame Leota, the psychic ghost whose head appears in a crystal ball. The character was previously played by Jennifer Tilly in the Eddie Murphy-led 2003 adaptation.
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Meanwhile, EW has also confirmed the addition of Oscar winner Jared Leto, who has boarded the project to play the role of the Hatbox Ghost. They will be joining an already star-studded cast, including LaKeith Stanfield (Atlanta), Tiffany Haddish (Girls’ Trip), Owen Wilson (Loki), Rosario Dawson (The Mandalorian), and Danny DeVito (Batman Returns).
Haunted Mansion will be directed by Justin Simien (Dear White People) from a screenplay written by Katie Dippold (Parks and Recreation). Further details about the new adaptation’s plot are still being kept under wraps, but Stanfield will reportedly play a widower who once believed in the supernatural but is now a rather lifeless tour guide in New Orleans’s French Quarter. Meanwhile, Haddish will portray a psychic hired to commune with the dead.
The titular theme park was first adapted into the 2003 film which starred Eddie Murphy as a workaholic realtor who, along with his family, gets trapped inside a mansion inhabited by ghosts.
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Set for a March 10, 2023 theatrical release, the new Haunted Mansion movie is being produced by Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich (Aladdin) of Rideback. Rideback’s Nick Reynolds will serve as executive producer.
The project comes after the recent successful launch of Jungle Cruise starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily. A sequel to the action-adventure film is currently in the works.
