Disney is developing a live-action Medusa movie, and a writer who worked on its live-action Tangled is behind the script. Michael Montemayor is writing the original Medusa film for Disney, with Dwayne Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions developing it under the company’s deal with the studio.
It is an original story rather than a remake, which makes it a different kind of project from most of Disney’s recent live-action slate. There is no animated Medusa film to adapt. The movie starts from Greek mythology instead.
Who Medusa Is
Medusa is one of the best-known figures in Greek myth. She was one of three Gorgon sisters, a woman with living snakes for hair whose gaze turned anyone who looked at her to stone. In the classic telling she is beheaded by the hero Perseus, who then uses her head as a weapon. Her sisters, Euryale and Stheno, were immortal, and Medusa was the only one of the three who could be killed. When she died, the winged horse Pegasus sprang from her body.
Disney audiences have met her recently, too. Jessica Parker Kennedy played Medusa in the first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney+, where she runs a roadside garden gnome emporium full of stone statues. The new movie is its own original project.
Plot details are being kept quiet. The film is described only as a “very unique take” on the character.
Johnson Is Producing, Not Starring
Johnson is not currently attached to appear in the movie. He is producing through Seven Bucks alongside his partners Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia. Seven Bucks has worked with Disney before, on the 2021 Jungle Cruise film that Johnson starred in and produced.
A Busy Stretch For Montemayor
Medusa is another Disney project for Montemayor. He wrote on the live-action Tangled, which wrapped filming ahead of its March 2028 release. He also wrote the original script for Stepsisters, a live-action Cinderella spinoff announced in March that is now being reworked by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, with Akiva Schaffer directing.
That gives Disney a writer who has already handled one big fairy tale for the studio, now taking on a story with no Disney version to lean on. Tangled could build on a 2010 animated film audiences already knew. Medusa has to create its own version of the character from the myth itself.
What Comes Next
Medusa is still early in development. With the script only now being written, there is no release date or window, and no casting has been announced.
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