With Disney spending big on photorealistic CG animals for both “The Jungle Book” and the upcoming “The Lion King,” it was expected their flagship original film release for the upcoming Disney+ streaming service – a live-action remake of “The Lady and the Tramp” – would follow the same path.

That’s not the case says actor Thomas Mann who plays one of the human characters in the film. Speaking with Collider this week, Mann confirmed the film has a period setting and they’re using real dogs in the movie. Asked about the key differences between this and the animated film he says:

“It’s a little more dramatic, too. I wouldn’t say that it’s a full-on drama or anything, but it’s a little more grown up, in its own way, and a little more sophisticated… I really think it’s an enhanced version of the world that you saw before. Obviously, the human characters are a little more flushed out. They’re not these passing faces that you barely get a glimpse of. You get to know them a little bit better. And also, there are real dogs. Who doesn’t want to see two real dogs kiss over a plate of spaghetti?

Talking more about the filming, he indicates the dogs weren’t highly trained film dogs either, and as a result, the crew had to accommodate the urges of all the various canines on set:

“The dogs were there. We shot with the dogs, every day. They were on set and they weren’t even trained. They found these dogs and started training them about three months before. They just wanted to find the perfect dogs. It was crazy because they didn’t know they were working, so they would run off in the middle of a take, and then come back over. You have to be extra patient because you have to be good every time for when they are good once. It was a lot of fun. It was so cute, every day, to just have a bunch of dogs to play with. It made the job a lot less stressful.”

Charlie Bean helms the movie which has Tessa Thompson and Justin Theroux doing the voices of the titular pooches in the film which is expected to debut on the service shortly after it launches in late 2019.