They should stop making them
Disney built its reputation on imagination. That is what makes its current dependence on live-action remakes feel so strange. The problem is no longer simply that these films exist.
It is that audiences are increasingly being asked to pay premium cinema prices to watch stories they already know, often with more expensive effects, longer running times and considerably less charm.
Snow White became the clearest warning, its worldwide gross finished at roughly $205 million against a reported $250 million production budget. Next on the agenda is Moana.
Released only ten years after the animated original, the remake has reached around $308 million worldwide from a production budget reported at $250 million, with analysts suggesting Disney could lose more than $100 million theatrically.
That is not nostalgia, that is extraordinarily expensive repetition. Yet Disney keeps receiving mixed messages.
Lilo & Stitch was a monster success, grossing $1.03 billion from a $100 million budget. Stitch remained culturally enormous for more than two decades, while audiences had been given time to miss that world, so what could be the next failure?
Tangled worries me, Disney has revived the live action adaptation. The original arrived in 2010, it still looks beautiful, its songs remain popular. Rapunzel never disappeared. Why exactly does it need replacing? That question could become the film’s biggest enemy.
Disney may discover that there is a difference between audiences wanting to revisit something and wanting it reconstructed with real actors and CGI. The irony is painful, but Disney possesses perhaps the greatest animation library ever created and yet increasingly behaves as though animation were merely a first draft for something “real”.
The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast proved this strategy can make billions. Lilo & Stitch proved it still can. Snow White and Moana demonstrate what happens when brand recognition is mistaken for demand. Disney does not need to stop looking backwards completely. It needs to remember why people looked towards Disney in the first place.
