Watch this: What will Disney do when it runs out of classics to remake?
There are only so many movies in the Disney Vault, so YouTuber captainmidnight offers a compelling theory on what comes next
Film Features Disney
There’s something wrong with the Disney Vault. In the early 90s, the studio’s legendary safe housed all its classic animated masterpieces to force scarcity on the marketplace. Parents would have to run out to Suncoast Video and pick up a clamshell VHS copy of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs before the doors to the vault slammed shut. Today, with the Disney Vault’s content spilled across Disney+, one would have to take a trip under the sea to avoid coming face-to-face with a Disney princess, with the only things remaining in the vault being Song Of The South, 2022's Willow TV show, and all the titles Disney retired to nab a $1.5 billion tax write down. But what happens when Disney runs out of classics to remake?
With the release of Disney’s latest remake, The Little Mermaid, YouTuber captainmidnight posed that very question in their video “What Happens When Disney Runs Out of Remakes.” The 10-minute video essay ponders why Disney isn’t making sequels off its remakes and what the Mouse House will do when they’ve burned through its stockpile of true-blue masterpieces. The answer, thus far, is Mufasa, a Lion King prequel and the only follow-up officially announced to any of the studio’s recent output.
As the video points out, this is a problem the company has faced before. In the early 90s, when the video rental market was booming, Disney began cheaply and quickly producing direct-to-video sequels to its biggest hit. Titles like The Return To Jafar—which this writer credits as the first time he realized movies could be bad—made bank in the mid-90s as Disneytoon Studios pumped out animated adventures of Aladdin for nearly 90 episodes. Though the studio’s cheaply made double dips generated huge profits, it damaged the integrity and legacy of the original work, which this current string of remakes could do as well.
The whole video is worth your time as it ties together Disney’s content churn, past and present, and what all this could mean for Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins’ upcoming entry into the canon, Mufasa. Most importantly, it gives us a chance to really look at the digital effects in Guy Richie’s 2019 Aladdin in the cold light of day.
66 Comments
Remake them again?
“Your favorite live action movies, now more animated than ever!”
IN 5D VR!
They could try out a few more mediums and genres. Claymation? Marionettes? Kabuki?
Let’s go back to Rotoscoping I fucking love Rotoscope.
Expect a call from Ralph Bakshi’s agent.
There’s certainly been some rotoscoping that I really love, as you might be able to guess from my icon.
Penises wearing wigs!
Sock puppets
Wouldn’t mind seeing a few bukkake adaptations myself.
I mean, those almost certainly exist already…
*Upon discovering this, Bam Sarbanti quickly died of dehydration
“What if your favourite Disney films were TikToks?”
Disney owns the muppets, and I would not be mad at a muppets version of the the classics.
They call them “re-imaginings”.
Pretty much my immediate reaction. They did it this time around for money. When they think enough time has gone by for another cash grab, they’ll do it again. For money.
First they will reverse imagineer Broadway musicals out of them. Then photorealistic, computer animated, “live action” versions. Then hand drawn animated remakes. Only then are they ripe for another live action re-imagineering.
In CG.
Yeah, by the time they’ve live-actioned all their animations and remade all the live-action movies they’ve made since the 50’s, enough time would have passed for them to be remade again.
Lap themselves again and go for three?
They are going to make pixar live action, Up, Cars, Incredibles.
I think there’s a Fantastic 4 movie on the roadmap, right? There’s your ‘Incredibles’.
Live-action Cars? Isn’t that just The Fast and the Furious?
Would people getting in and out of the cars make it inter-species pornography?
No, that’s what we got Transformers for
Though the studio’s cheaply made double dips generated huge profits, it damaged the integrity and legacy of the original work, which this current string of remakes could do as well.Could? Has.
I’m annoyed every time these garbage live-action remakes come up and the writer fails to mention Iger’s “brand deposit” quote.
I mean, at this point Disney is more MCU + Star Wars than old school toons. They’re not exactly hurting for IP.
Remake The Little Mermaid again, but this time really fuck up Flounder and cover him with open sores and hairy moles.
The Little Mermaid 2: Pfiesteria Boogaloo
I was thinking fat, drunk, and stupid college freshman the next time around.
Aren’t they already live-actioning Moana? At some point they’ll just release an animated movie and then release the live action remake the same time the next year.
Sequels that tie together previous films to form an evermore complex Disney Expanded Universe?
I wonder what’s actually stopping them from making Kingdom Hearts adjacent media.
‘”I wonder what’s actually stopping them from making Kingdom Hearts adjacent media.”’Most likely Square Enix
They’ll do animated versions of their live-action movies. Animated The Nutty Professor. Animated The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Animated The Santa Clause.
THE UGLY DACHSUND
THE GNOME MOBILE
Disney are cowards if they don’t remake The Lion King 1 ½
Hey, still waiting on my creepy CGI Goofy in a “live action” A Goofy Movie. IT HAD BETTER HAPPEN.
This take!!!! This one right here 💯
I’ve never seen The Return to Jafar
I wonder if it’s related to The Return of Jafar.
No, it’s From Jafar to Kelly
No, it’s Spider-Man: Jafar from Home.
Jafar and Away, where Jafar tries to prevent Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman from participating in the Oklahoma land rush.
“Jafar and Away, where Jafar tries to prevent Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman from participating in the Oklahoma land rush.”And then Cruise hoodwinks Jafar by inviting him to attend a “meeting”.
Harold and Jafar Usurp the White Castle
Jafar, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover(s)
IT features Jafar singing, “I’ve been to Paradise, but I’ve never been to me.”
Surely if that were the case they would have mentioned it in the article, DS!
I had to double check cause I could’ve sworn it was Return of Jafar too… It is! Why didn’t they check, it’s a quick Google search away.
Eventually…we all return to Jafar…
I don’t suddenly think less of the original The Lion King just because they made a less interesting “live action” version that I never bothered to watch. I still love Alladin and never watched any of the direct to video sequels despite knowing that they existed and were crappy. I think it’s a bunch of hand wringing, tbh. When they run out, there will just be space for more original animated content. They have a lot of experience with that. And in a few more years they can make live action versions of those too…
It’s time for Disney, Universal (serial offender # 2), Sony (serial offender # 3) and the rest of Hollywood to get off their collective lazy asses and develop something new and original. This is one of the main reasons why I don’t watch TV or movies anymore. Oh, and Disney…just bite the bullet and release “Song of the South”. I understand the movie’s theme and the potential backlash (That’s Racist!) that will follow, but…if Warners still offers “Gone With The Wind” and get away with it, then so can you.I also chided Warners for not releasing the “Censored Eleven” banned cartoons despite their repeated promises to do so. I wound up buying them on EBay from a seller who obtained the prints from the public domain and loaded them onto DVD. Guess what? There are dozens of Warners shorts that are far more offensive than these so-called censored shorts, and they are still being shown.
Remake Song of the South, but with the live action parts animated and the animated parts live action.
Meanwhile, I’m just waiting for Tron 3 and a new Herbie movie (real Herbie, not that kiddie Knight Rider-esque reboot they threatened to make). Maybe that’s just a different kind of creatively bankrupt, but regular ol’ sequels are far more capable of treading new ground than “live action” remakes featuring emotionless CGI animals.
The live action ‘Inside Out’ will be the first movie made entirely of MRI scans.
Well they’ve got 3 optionsOption 1 make live action remakes of their latest original animated movies (Tangled, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, etc)Option 2 make live action remakes of their their latest collaborations with Pixar (Elemental, etc.)Option 3 adapt a new story into cgi animation (for later live action remake adaptations. Got to keep the coffers full right?)
They still have some sequels to IPs they own that were never made which they could and more importantly SHOULD DO.The Rocketeer’s sequel has been put on the back burner for a while. Jared Leto for some reason is still anticipating the making of the next sequel to TRON.They’re not hurting for ideas. They just don’t want to do them right now for some reason.Perhaps when James Cameron is done making his sequels to Avatar they’ll be more open to them.
Thought I had heard that they were making a sequel to Aladdin (and a spin-off TV show that they cancelled), as well as Lion King and Mulan. Imo they’ve barely scratched the surface of remakes while burning through all of their 90s renaissance content in two seconds for some reason. Movies that would actually probably benefit from a “live-action” remake are: Snow White, Bambi, Fantasia could be experimental, actually do Alice in Wonderland, 101 Dalmatians they could do better, The Rescuers 1 or 2, Fox and the Hound, Sword and the Stone, The Black Cauldron (get a competent director who is a fan), Hunchback of Notre Dame, Emperor’s New Groove, Atlantis.The probably even have some live action films they could give the big spectacle rebuff to. And I’m sure they’ll do Frozen or even Encanto at some point too
Disney has invented numerous original IP over the years. Granted those IPs don’t make a ton of money like a recognizable remake.
I don’t support these “live action” remakes. Haven’t seen any of them. It’s the new, original work I think people should be concerned with.The theatrical output of Disney and Pixar animated features has been a bit shaky. I haven’t disliked it completely, but also feel like it’s been a good while since I’ve actually wanted to rewatch any of it. Is anyone really looking forward to Elemental?On top of that the Star Wars and MCU features (not including TV) have been more clunky or just bad than good. They really need to start knocking it out of the park with the next ones. To make it worse, my kids feel the same way I do.
They should do live action remakes of the crappy direct-to-video sequels, like Cinderella 3: The One with the Time Travel Plot.
If there’s one thing as irritating and inessential as Disney remakes, it’s YouTube essays. (Say what you will about the ‘angry critic’ style of video that was popular in the 10s, at least they weren’t this smug…)