Winona Ryder joins the cast of Disney's new Haunted Mansion movie
Ryder, Hasan Minaj, and Dan Levy have joined the already-packed cast for the new take on a Haunted Mansion film
![Winona Ryder joins the cast of Disney's new Haunted Mansion movie](https://img.pastemagazine.com/wp-content/avuploads/2022/09/15004940/ba3ddc372ac8e2ce953ef885fa6601bf.jpg)
Winona Ryder started her career spooky, and has rarely shied away from a return to the world of scare-based entertainment; from Beetlejuice all the way up to the career-revitalizing Stranger Things, Ryder has always been at home amongst the cinematic haunted.
That affinity for the macabre is about to get even more literal soon, as Disney announced today that Ryder is one of several big-name stars who’ve signed on to join the cast of the new Haunted Mansion movie. Ryder, Dan Levy, and Hasan Minaj have all joined the roster for Justin Simien’s stab at a second movie based off the iconic Disney ride.
This all comes, of course, from D23—your one-stop shop for thinking way too goddamn much about Disney on an otherwise peaceful Friday evening—where Simien was on hand to talk up the film. He describes the movie as a loving homage to the original ride, including lots of references to its various ghouls and dead people. (Jared Leto, for instance, is playing “The Hatbox Ghost,” a long-decommissioned, recently restored animatronic from the ride who has an 850-word Wikipedia page all of his own, because this is just what Disney people are like.)
The film will center on Rosario Dawson, playing a single mom who moves into the, well, Haunted Mansion. The supporting cast is absolutely packed, including Owen Wilson, LaKeith Stanfield, Leto, Tiffany Haddish (hm), Ryder, Jamie Lee Curtis, Levy, Minaj, and Danny DeVito, with most of them playing either ghosts, or experts who Dawson brings in to try to clear all these dang dead people out of her house.
Simien expressed his enthusiasm for the original ride, which he used to work at in his younger years. “There was something about that ride that I felt was there in the script,” he told D23, per Variety. “I wanted to be sure all the Easter Eggs are there because I’m a nerd.”