Watch: Tim Burton’s Dumbo gets a trailer
Tim Burton’s a good choice for a live-action (plus) CGI remake of Dumbo, the latest Disney animated classic to get the reboot treatment. Though he’s only made one circus movie prior — 2003’s Big Fish, though Batman Returns does feature, as semi-sympathetic villains, rejected carnival staffers — his whole CV is crammed with paeans to society’s oddballs and rejects, who he knows how to treat as entertainment for the masses. Judging from its new trailer, his Dumbo will be even more of a weepie than the 1941 original, about a young elephant with giant ears who can theoretically (and sometimes actually) fly. Rendered as an anthropomorphized creation, he has big sad eyes, which will surely come in handy for the litany of humiliations and tragedies the story throws at him. There are also plenty of humans, some of them Burton regulars. Along with Colin Farrell and Burton muse Eva Green, Dumbo will also be a Batman Returns reunion, bringing back both Danny DeVito and a semi-recognizable Michael Keaton, the onetime Caped Crusader, who seems to really be enjoying his second act as a bad guy. Dumbo hits theaters on March 29.