Disney preparing live-action Peter Pan with Pete’s Dragon director

According to Deadline, Walt Disney Pictures is going ahead with a live-action version of Peter Pan, which the studio made as an animated classic in 1953. Director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) will helm the new version from a screenplay by Toby Halbrooks, after their own live-action remake Disney’s Pete’s Dragon opens on August 12.

The Peter Pan film is the latest in Disney’s extensive slate of upcoming live-action projects culled from their animation library, including this weekend’s The Jungle Book (and its already-in-the-works sequel), Alice Through the Looking Glass, Pete’s Dragon, Beauty and the Beast, Cruella, Maleficent 2, Dumbo, Mulan, Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, Genies, Night on Bald Mountain and The Sword in the Stone. A live-action Tinkerbell movie starring Reese Witherspoon is also in parallel development to Peter Pan, and could feature crossover casting.

J.M. Barrie’s forever youthful creation recently hit the big screen in P. J. Hogan’s 2003 film Peter Pan as well as last year’s prequel Pan, directed by Joe Wright. Both films performed disastrously at the box office.

Lowery is concurrently developing the real-life bank heist movie The Old Man And The Gun for his Pete’s Dragon star Robert Redford.