New Haunted Mansion Movie!

Exciting news from Comic-Con Guillermo del Toro made a surprise announcement at the end of the "Tron Legacy" Panel.... he is going to be making a new Haunted Mansion film based on the famous Disney theme park attraction. This is going to take a much darker tone than the family friendly Eddie Murphy release back in 2003. Del Toro is warning this is one not to take the kids to as true to his previous releases like Pan's Labyrinth it going to be a very frightening take on Haunted Mansion concept.

As some of you might remember Guillermo del Toro made an announcement at D23 that he was going to be teaming up with Disney to create darker films under the label "Disney Double Dare You" so I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first one to be made under that brand.

While I did quite like the original Haunted Mansion movie despite some of it's flaws I am very excited to see another take on it. Especially one that will capture more of the atmosphere from the theme park attraction, which I felt was slightly lacking in the original release. However the only thing that slightly concerns me is that it won't child friendly which could alienate a lot of families and might cause complaints in a similar way to Alien Encounter attractions in terms of it being too scary to be placed under the Disney umbrella.

I think at the end of the day I am hoping for something like the Pirates of the Caribbean films, still family friendly enough to be enjoyed by everyone but with enough atmosphere to capture the underlying essence of the attraction. The original release of Haunted Mansion was too comedic, over the top and lost some the life blood of the original attraction which was a shame, so if they tone down the comedy a bit and install some of the darker undertones they could be on to a winner.