Bryce Dallas Howard in talks for Disney's Pete's Dragon

Bryce Dallas Howard is in early talks to play the female lead in Disney's Pete's Dragon. If a deal is finalized, she will join Oakes Fegley as the title character Pete, with Robert Redford also in talks to join the cast. 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. No details were given for Bryce Dallas Howard's character, but it's possible that she could be playing a character similar to Nora (Helen Reddy) in the original Pete's Dragon, the daughter of drunken lighthouse operator Lampie (Mickey Rooney).

The Disney's Pete's Dragon is expected to shoot between January and April 2015 in New Zealand’s Stone Street Studios — the same place where The Hobbit films are based. Other locations around New Zealand will also be used including the Bay of Plenty, Wellington, and the Canterbury region.