Just how weird is Tim Burton’s Dum­bo remake going to be?

Dis­ney is cur­rent­ly pulling out all the stops in its quest to update its beloved ani­ma­tion back cat­a­logue for a 21^st cen­tu­ry audience.

We’ve already been treat­ed to live-action remakes of Beau­ty and the Beast, Cin­derel­la and The Jun­gle Book, and there is plen­ty more kid­die-friend­ly fare on the way.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, each slat­ed project has been met with a great deal of scruti­ny. Cash­ing in on cher­ished clas­sics makes sense com­mer­cial­ly, but inflat­ed expec­ta­tions comes with the ter­ri­to­ry, and there will be nowhere to hide should the stu­dio fluff up any of these forth­com­ing reboots.

Eye­brows have already been raised at Disney’s deci­sion to hire Guy Ritchie to direct a new Aladdin movie, one report­ed­ly made due to his famil­iar­i­ty with street-hus­tling sto­ry­lines – despite the marked dif­fer­ence between the fic­tion­al Agrabah and London.

The direc­tor of the upcom­ing Mulan remake, Niki Caro, upset fans recent­ly when she sug­gest­ed that her film would fea­ture no music, a com­ment she has since rowed back on.

Also on the cards – deep breath – are: The Lion King, with Don­ald Glover as Sim­ba and James Earl Jones return­ing as Mufasa; The Sword in the Stone, writ­ten by reg­u­lar Game of Thrones scribe Bryan Cog­man; a 101 Dal­ma­tians spin-off fea­tur­ing Emma Stone as Cruel­la de Vil; a Mary Pop­pins sequel star­ring Emi­ly Blunt; a David Low­ery-direct­ed Peter Pan; a Peter Hedges-penned Pinoc­chio; and The Lit­tle Mer­maid with new songs from Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Per­haps most curi­ous of all, though, is Tim Burton’s live-action redo of Dum­bo, which is set to star Eva Green, Dan­ny DeVi­to and now Col­in Farrell.

To be fair, the orig­i­nal 1941 film is not with­out sur­re­al and unnerv­ing ele­ments – most notably the scene where Dum­bo hal­lu­ci­nates a parade of shapeshift­ing pink ele­phants. Nonethe­less, we’re slight­ly puz­zled as to how Burton’s dis­tinct visu­al style will work in the con­text of this par­tic­u­lar Dis­ney property.

The thought of the goth­ical­ly-inclined film­mak­er run­ning riot in a clown-filled cir­cus is the stuff of night­mares. Which begs the ques­tion, just how weird will Burton’s Dum­bo remake be?

Which Dis­ney ani­ma­tions would you most/​least like to see in live-action form? Let us know @LWLies