Bryce Dallas Howard is in early talks to play the female lead in Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” reboot, an individual with knowledge of the project told TheWrap.
As TheWrap was the first to report, “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” director David Lowery is directing the film he was first hired to co-write.
Robert Redford is also in talks for a role in the new film.
The original 1977 film featured an animated dragon interacting with a live-action cast including Mickey Rooney, Shelley Winters, Red Buttons and Sean Marshall, who played an orphan fleeing his abusive adoptive parents.
Lowery and Toby Halbrooks wrote the script, which reinvents the core of the original family film, which is not expected to be a musical this time around. The story follows a young boy, Pete (Oakes Fegley), whose parents are dead. He is subsequently raised by the titular dragon in a forest that’s being threatened by loggers.
Howard, represented by ICM Partners and Management 360, will next be seen in “Jurassic World.” She is prepping to make her directorial debut on “The Originals,” which she also wrote.
