It’s being reported that Will Smith has entered into talks to star in Dumbo, one of Disney’s many live-action remakes of their classic animated features, which is set to be directed by Tim Burton.

It’s stressed that these talks are in the early stages, and a done deal is far from happening. But if ink does meet paper, Smith joining the adaptation could impact another big project, Bad Boys 3.

Yet another of Walt Disney’s classic animated movies is set to be turned into a live-action feature, and Tim Burton has been brought in to make it.

It’s being reported that Burton, who made the live-action version of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland that starred Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska and went on to score over $1 billion worldwide at the box office, is set to return to the Mouse House for a live action adaptation of the 1941 animated hit Dumbo.

Disney has chosen the next of their hand-drawn animated movies to remake as a live-action feature.

Joining the likes of Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent, and upcoming titles Cinderella, The Jungle Book, and Beauty and the Beast, Disney is now developing a live-action take on the 1941 classic Dumbo.

Transformers: Age of Extinction
Director: Michael Bay
Screenwriters: Ehren Kruger
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammar, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Titus Welliver, T.J. Miller, Li Bingbing
Paramount Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 165 Minutes
Release Date: June 27, 2014

In Transformers: Age of Extinction, the Transformers are America’s most wanted. After the Fall of Chicago, CIA operative Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammar) assembles Cemetery Wind, a strike team tasked with exterminating the remaining Autobots and Decepticons. His secret weapon is Lockdown, an intergalactic mercenary on a mission to capture Optimus Prime.

In rural Texas, struggling robotics inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and his partner Lucas (T.J. Miller) purchase an old semi-truck in hopes of stripping it down for parts. Turns out the ol’ rust bucket is Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), leader of the Autobots and the U.S. government’s public enemy number one.

James Woods isn’t taking the Videodrome remake news very well.

David Cronenberg‘s Videodrome, a mind-melting fresco of trenchant social commentary and nightmarish body horror, is a unique beast among the science-fiction and horror features of the 1980’s. It was the lauded Canadian filmmaker’s first studio film and also his first bonafide masterpiece. It featured amazingly gooey and horrific visual effects created by a talented team spearheaded by the one and only Rick Baker, daring performances from James Woods and Blondie lead singer Deborah Harry, and astute and chilling direction from Cronenberg – who also authored the provocative screenplay. In fact, Videodrome is the singular creation of an visionary storyteller finally hiding his stride as a director after spending years making multi-layered genre films like Rabid, Shivers (a.k.a. They Came from Within), and The Brood for indie producers and studios in his homeland.

Given almost total creative control from Universal Pictures, Cronenberg made a film that took the fascinating ideas he had been developing in his previous features and fused it with a challenging critique of modern technology and new media. The result was a motion picture experience the likes of which had never been seen before and would never be seen again, not even in the director’s later works. No less an authority than the late celebrated artistic genius Andy Warhol hailed Videodrome as “A Clockwork Orange of the 1980s”. But Videodrome opened in theaters to repulsed audience reaction and the sharpened knives of the nation’s top film critics. The version that played in the United States wasn’t even Cronenberg’s preferred cut; Universal compelled the director to pare down his movie’s sexual and violent content in order for it to secure an R rating from the MPAA. His full director’s cut would not been seen until it was finally released on home video more than a decade later.