Alice in Wonderland 2 has been scheduled for a May 27, 2016 release, Disney announced Friday.
According to The Hollywood Reporter , both Mia Wasikowska and Johnny Depp will be returning for the sequel to the 2010 blockbuster, which grossed $1.02 billion at the global box office. Moviegoers could see a double dose of Depp in the summer of 2016; Disney has moved Pirates of the Caribbean 5 from its original May 2015 date, and is reportedly aiming to move it to the following summer.
Also scheduled for the summer of 2016 are The Amazing Spider-Man 3 , How to Train Your Dragon 3 , Finding Dory , Angry Birds , and ID Forever Part 1 . There are also two untitled Marvel films scheduled for May and July 2016, but neither project has been announced yet.
Alice in Wonderland 2 will be directed by James Bobin ( The Muppets ), and produced by Joe Roth, Jennifer Todd, and Suzanne Todd. In May, THR confirmed that Linda Woolverton, who wrote the script for the first film, has been tapped to write the sequel.
Disney has also scheduled Jungle Book for an October 9, 2015 release. The live-action film will be directed by Jon Favreau with a script written by Justin Marks.
“I can’t say that much, but there is an interesting take that could be very cool, and the hope is to relaunch a family brand with certain mythic elements,” Favreau said. “It is my first real family film since Elf , and there are action elements and visual effects that I feel like my experience on the Iron Man films are going to be useful.”
Disney previously released an animated film version of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book in 1967. It was the last animated film Walt Disney worked on before his death on December 15, 1966. A live action remake starring Jason Scott Lee, Cary Elwes, and Lena Heady followed in 1994, and an animated theatrical sequel, The Jungle Book 2 , was released in 2003.
