While completing production on Tim Allen starrer “The Shaggy Dog,” Disney-based Mandeville Films has lined up a slate of new pics under its deal including a remake of “Swiss Family Robinson” to go next summer and a feature version of Disneyland theme park ride “Jungle Cruise.”
Shingle is also expected to start production in February on the long-in-the-works “Antarctica,” a Frank Marshall-directed remake of the 1983 Japanese film.
Disney library gem “The Shaggy Dog” will be directed by Brian Robbins for a summer release.
Mandeville’s David Hoberman said Mandeville tried for a long time to find the right take on “Swiss Family Robinson” but got stuck on a contemporized version. After Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group prexy Nina Jacobson screened the old film for her family, she sparked to the idea of keeping the 1800s period setting of the Johann David Wyss book.
Greg Poirier then wrote a first draft about the shipwrecked Swiss settler family that sparked Jacobson and studio topper Dick Cook to set a start date.
Cook in particular was passionate about “Jungle Cruise,” a ride the studio chairman used to operate when he worked at the theme park as a kid. Cook invited Hoberman to come to the park and take the ride. “It’s an adventure film with comedic elements, but its core is almost a family version of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” about a group that travels upriver, in search of a significant cure,” Hoberman said. Josh Goldstein and John Norville (“Tin Cup”) have inked to pen the script for “Cruise.”
Hoberman is also finally going into production on “Antarctica” after a previous false start. Project was shelved that time because there wasn’t enough snow at the pic’s intended location by the time production was to begin, and last-minute alternatives would have made the film too expensive. Marshall is putting together his cast for a Feb. 22 start.
Separate from Disney, Mandeville is also gearing for a spring start on “The House Next Door,” an adaptation of the Anne Siddons novel that is being written and directed by Mary Agnes Donoghue, who wrote “Beaches” for Hoberman when he ran the studio. Financing is being put together by WMA.
Mandeville also produced the “Barbershop” spinoff “Beauty Shop” at MGM. Pic opens March 30.
Hoberman and Lieberman are in production on the Laurence Malkin-directed “Five Fingers,” a pic financed by Element Films and starring Laurence Fishburne.
