While Disney is still a company that many hold in their minds as magical, and they do still often make "magical" content, there has been a lot more criticism of the media giant over the past few years. As one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, they have essentially unlimited budgets and resources, and a lot of Disney fans (as well as the general public) are seemingly questioning why they aren't using this power to make better choices in terms of the content they create. They seem to be leaning the brand more towards capitalizing on nostalgia than anything else recently.
Disney is deep in the midst of a trend of remaking a lot of their animated classics in a live-action format, taking the stories that many people grew up with and transforming them for a new generation. The only problem is that none of these live-action remakes have been able to live up to the originals, and though they are often popular at the box office, they suck the joy and charm out of what made the original animated movies so good in the first place. They also have no intentions of stopping, apparently, as they have a whole slate of remakes in the works, including for films that aren't even a decade old yet. Disney would be better off quitting while they're ahead and should focus on making new, original content rather than just retreading the past in a much less interesting way.
What New Live-Action Remakes Is Disney Working On?
While only a few of the planned live-action remakes have been put into production, Disney has plans for a whole host of films that could conceivably carry them into the next decade. Peter Pan and Wendy and The Little Mermaid are both coming out this spring, and live-action versions of Lilo and Stitch and Moana have also both been in the news a lot recently. Lilo and Stitch has begun the casting process, and Moana was just announced over social media by Dwayne Johnson, who claims that he will reprise his role as Maui. This announcement was especially shocking for a lot of Disney fans, since Moana only came out in 2016 and is one of the company's more recent offerings, so it seems much too early to put out a total redo of the story.
Aside from those movies, a live-action version of Snow White starring Rachel Zegler and a sequel to the live-action The Lion King are also currently in production. Adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Sword in the Stone, Hercules, Bambi, Robin Hood, and The Aristocats are also all in the development stages. The screen rights to one of the more obscure Disney cartoons, The Black Cauldron, have also been acquired for live-action. Disney is also planning to make a movie centered around Tinkerbell called Tink, and there are development plans for sequels to live-action versions of The Jungle Book, Aladdin, and Cruella as well.
Why Don’t Live Action Remakes Work As Well As The Originals?
The Disney live-action remakes are huge box office successes, there's no denying that. After all, there's a reason that they keep getting made. However, commercial success doesn't always equal quality, and in the case of the live-action remakes, it rarely ever does. The remakes tend to suck a lot of the heart and soul out of the animated classics, as the visuals tend towards realism and boring beige palettes rather than bright, eye-catching animation. Even the title "live-action" is often a misnomer, as many of the films (like The Lion King or The Jungle Book) are animal-centric and rely on heavy CGI usage anyway. It's also very clear that Disney's first priority with these remakes is to make money, not to actually do anything meaningful with the stories themselves. The plots hardly change in any significant way that would actually warrant a redo, and they don't make the stories any more complex, really. They explore the same thing the animated movies do, they just take twice as long to do it.
From a creative, storytelling perspective, the live-action remakes are completely unnecessary and unexciting, despite their box office numbers. It's even worse to be making these movies when the very films they're remaking are fairly new themselves. No one had even considered that a Moana remake would happen any time soon because the movie is still a recent one. Most Disney fans seem to have at least come together on that front specifically, wondering why Disney is already planning to remake one of its most recent films. Even without the Moana remake, Disney's slate is so packed with these live-action projects that it clearly seems to be where they're focusing their time and energy, rather than on the animated movies that made them beloved in the first place. Continuing down the path of mostly pursuing the remakes might make them a lot of money right now, but it will also lower people's respect for the company, especially if it continues to feel like they're losing that particular brand of "Disney magic".