Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Eva Green and Alan Arkin star in a story about a family that works at a failing traveling circus encounter a baby elephant with extremely large ears who is capable of flying.

It was the first of five live-action adaptations of prior animated Disney films released in 2019, along with Aladdin, The Lion King, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and Lady and the Tramp.

The circus has run into financial troubles; Medici reveals he was forced to sell his stable of horses after Holt's wife and co-performer, Annie, died from the Spanish flu outbreak.

After Holt reveals that he lost his arm in the Battle of the Argonne, Medici instead hires him as the caretaker for Mother Ella Jumbo, the circus' pregnant Asian elephant.

She gives birth to a calf with unusually large ears, and Medici orders Holt to hide them, fearing how the public might react to such a deformity.

Mrs. Jumbo, angered by her son's mistreatment, rampages into the ring, causing extensive damage, collapsing the big top, and accidentally killing Rufus, a handler who antagonizes her.

Annoyed by Dumbo's disobedience and fearing the possibility of his mother becoming a distraction to him, Vandevere fires the Medici troupe and orders Mrs. Jumbo's exhibit to be shuttered to secure his sterling reputation.

When Holt and the Medici troupe learn that Vandevere intends to have Dumbo's mother euthanized and that it is no longer safe for the two elephants to live with them, they make plans to free both of them.

[34] In March 2017, Burton's frequent collaborators, Eva Green[35] and Danny DeVito,[11] joined the cast as Colette, a trapeze artist, and Max Medici, the circus' ringmaster, respectively.

[13] Due to her fear of heights, Green trained with aerialist Katherine Arnold and choreographer Fran Jaynes in order to prepare for the role.

[1] In April 2017, another veteran of Burton's films, Michael Keaton, joined Dumbo, to complete the casting of prominent "adult" roles.

"[33] He also said that Burton is "[a]lways spirited, always an artist, always thinking about the craft, always painting with his mind," and that he felt like "part of some kind of palette, a color scheme" while filming the movie.

[They] certainly make the baby elephant look believable, but [they] also stylized our world, pushing it into an expressive direction with all of the lighting, costumes, props and environments.

"[1] Burton filmed the remake in sound stages, stating that "[f]or this kind of movie, shooting all indoors obviously helps with weather concerns and all those things.

"[1] The production team also created a full-scale version of the train "Casey Jr." from the original film, though it was visually redesigned in order to reflect the circus' state.

At Rodeo, to achieve the effects for the opening sequence of the train travelling through the country, augmented aerial footage was merged with matte paintings and computer-generated imagery.

[42] The Third Floor, Inc., tasked primarily with creating the animals of the film, achieved the effects of humans flying on Dumbo using a 3D mold of the character and an animatronic mounted on a 6-axis gimbal.

[53][54] In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside The Beach Bum and Unplanned, and was projected to gross $50–65 million from 4,259 theaters in its opening weekend.

[56][57] The start was considered disappointing, given the $170 million budget and the Disney brand, with the blame put on the original film being 78 years old and the middling critical response versus poor marketing.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Dumbo is held partly aloft by Tim Burton's visual flair, but a crowded canvas and overstretched story leave this live-action remake more workmanlike than wondrous.

"[67] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "The hopes of diehard Burton fans might have been stoked by the recruitment of Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito, totems of the director's more consistent days.

Up to then, the filmmaker's overstuffed visual imagination and appetite for sinister gloom all but trample the enchantment of a tale that, at heart, is simple and whimsical.

[70] For IndieWire, David Ehrlich gave split opinions on the acting, praising DeVito and Keaton's performances but criticizing Arkin's as "hilariously lazy" and stated it would invite the audience to "stop caring about the plot".

[71] The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave the film one star out of five, lamenting that "Tim Burton's new Dumbo lands in the multiplex big top with a dull thud.

It is a flightless pachyderm of a film that saddles itself with 21st-century shame at the idea of circus animals, overcomplicating the first movie, losing the directness, abandoning the lethal pathos, mislaying the songs and finally getting marooned in some sort of steampunk Jurassic Park, jam-packed with retro-futurist boredom.