EXCLUSIVE: Disney is taking a fresh look at the live-action take on Tangled, we hear, which is resuming early development with Scarlett Johansson circling the role of Mother Gothel. The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey is still attached to direct, working from a script by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson based on the 2010 animated feature.

Disney hit pause on the project in April after getting jitters from the box office performance from its live-action take of Snow White. However, there’s a big difference in regards to the audience appeal for old Disney animated pics getting a live-action take, versus those titles since the 1989 Little Mermaid musical renaissance. Those live-action redos — e.g., Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Lilo & Stitch — have had greater success at the box office. Lilo & Stitch alone is the highest-grossing MPA title of 2025 to date with $1.03 billion worldwide.

The original 2010 movie, which grossed close to $600 million worldwide, followed the magically long-haired Rapunzel, who has spent her entire life in a tower. But now that a runaway thief has stumbled upon her, she is about to discover the world for the first time, and who she really is.

Under its leadership, the Disney Live Action team is continuing to celebrate/revisit existing stories through a modern lens, while also investing in new IP – as evidenced by the Impossible Creatures announcement earlier this week – in an effort to build a foundation of new stories that can be told for generations to come.

Johansson’s feature directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, starring June Squibb, recently opened in theaters via Sony Pictures Classics and has a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score from audiences. The movie received a six-minute standing ovation at its Cannes Film Festival world premiere. The two-time Oscar nominee starred in two movies this summer: Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme and Universal’s Jurassic World Rebirth, the latter of which, at $867.9M, is the year’s third highest-grossing MPA title.

Johansson’s movies have grossed $17.7 billion at the worldwide box office.

She is repped by CAA and Yorn Levine Barnes.