AceShowbiz -

"Pete's Dragon" has found its leading lady in Bryce Dallas Howard. The "Jurassic World" actress is in negotiations to join the cast of Disney's reinvention of its 1977 classic children's movie. David Lowery will direct from a script he wrote with Toby Halbrooks.

The original movie was a musical, but this new take is a live action/CGI hybrid and is expected to be a straight narrative. The setting is tweaked from a 20th century fishing village to a logging community. Pete is a boy raised by a dragon who resides in the threatened forest after his parents died in a car crash.

Oakes Fegley is tapped to take on the title role and Oona Laurence is booked to portray a newly created character named Natalie as Pete's human friend. Robert Redford will play a local who tells tales about the dragons, much to his community's disbelief. Howard is expected to portray a forest ranger who finds the boy and doesn't believe his stories about a dragon at first.