Why ‘Little Mermaid’ May Mark the End of Disney’s Remake Factory Hits

When Bob Iger took over Walt Disney again, one of his first moves was to reassure Wall Street that more sequels and remakes were coming. Disney has a lot in its vault, and remaking animated classics as live-action movies is widely seen as a safe strategy, with built-in audiences for familiar fare.

That strategy is coming into question, though, as weak international box office numbers for “The Little Mermaid” trickle in. The live-action remake of the 1989 film grossed $95 million in its Friday-Sunday North American debut, but just $68 million overseas. For comparison, star power fueled the 2019 “Aladdin” remake with Will Smith and 2017’s “Beauty and the Beast” with Emma Watson, both of which earned more than $1 billion, mostly overseas.

What ties Disney’s recent remakes together is that they’re primarily based on movies from what’s called its “Renaissance” period — a range from the late 1980s to late 1990s when Walt Disney Feature Animation returned to producing critically and commercially successful animated films (many of them musicals). So if Disney were to continue its remakes, it will need to start tapping into its more recent releases.

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So as it’s already running low on Renaissance films to remake, Disney will need to turn to movies like “Frozen” and “Tangled.” It’s already focusing on “Moana” with Dwayne Johnson reprising his role as Maui in the upcoming live-action remake, which just signed up “Hamilton” director Thomas Kail.

“Moana” would seem to fit the bill: It earned more than 60% of its box office internationally, suggesting global appeal. And it’s a perennial streaming favorite on Disney+. The only problem: The original animated version came out less than seven years ago.

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“Turning any of these newer films into live-action remakes is a pretty poor idea,” Josh Spiegel, the author of “Pixar and the Infinite Past: Nostalgia and Pixar Animation,” told TheWrap. “The body’s not quite cold yet.”

Spiegel questioned whether any of Disney’s newer titles had anything approaching the nostalgic pull of the Disney Renaissance-era films. Disney didn’t respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

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Mining the vault

It was something of a fluke when Walt Disney’s 2010 live-action “Alice in Wonderland” overcame lousy reviews to become just the sixth movie to pass $1 billion worldwide. Nobody expected the next batch of Disney remakes or revamps (“Oz: The Great and Powerful,” “Maleficent” and “Cinderella”) to follow suit.

Then Disney started mining its Renaissance. “Beauty and the Beast” ($1.263 billion in 2017) offered a mostly faithful remake of the 1991 Best Picture-nominated classic, complete with all the popular musical numbers. Ditto “Aladdin” ($1.053 billion in 2019) and “The Lion King” ($1.648 billion in 2019). “Mulan,” an early 2020 remake of a late-Renaissance production, was tracking for an $85 million domestic debut when theaters closed down in March of that year. It likely would have been a hit if not for the pandemic.

The problem is that there are few films left from that era that could sustain a remake. And the results of “The Little Mermaid” reinforce the need to scrutinize the performance of the originals to understand the global potential of a given work. The original “Little Mermaid” earned just $99.8 million overseas, less than half its total. The two “Frozen” films, by contrast, amassed $1.86 billion out of $2.74 billion globally in non-U.S. markets.

Another advantage of remaking more recent movies is that Disney won’t have to sand off the rougher edges of scenes or characters that seem less than enlightened in modern times. (See the YouTube outcry after the new “Little Mermaid” dropped some lyrics from Ursula’s “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”) Disney films of the last 15 years have more modern sensibilities baked in.

Admittedly, Disney has thrived by selling remakes as more socially aware or progressive than the originals. “Beauty and the Beast” made Belle an inventor, and “Aladdin” gave Princess Jasmine a fight-the-patriarchy power ballad with “Speechless.” It will be harder to find a twist on newer remakes.

That could be an advantage, though, to the extent that fans liked the originals as they were.

“Disney wouldn’t have to deal with… pundits and online commentators complaining that their childhood favorites have been sullied,” Rebecca Hains, the author of “The Princess Problem” and professor of media and communications at Salem State University, told TheWrap.

The remake factory

Remakes of “Lilo & Stitch” and “Hercules” are in development, alongside Reese Witherspoon’s long-gestating “Tink” and a rumored “Bambi” remake. That’s not even counting potential sequels to “The Jungle Book” and “Aladdin,” a Barry Jenkins-directed prequel to “The Lion King” and the upcoming “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” with Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot.

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Even Pixar’s purely animated corpus might be up for live-action grabs. A more fantastical franchise like “Cars” might not work, but more human-centric movies like “Brave” or “Up” could be up for discussion. What if Pixar gave Marvel some superhero competition with a live-action “Incredibles”?

“They shouldn’t want that, but they might pursue it,” said Spiegel, of the prospect of a photorealistic, CGI-assisted remake of an animated Pixar hit.

Disney’s large consumer-products business is a key motivator.

“When you make a live-action ‘Frozen’ or a new ‘Tangled,’ that’s more opportunities to get kids to buy the same Disney princess characters now looking like whoever plays her and wearing whatever new outfits the new film provides her,” said Hains, who believes that the degree that a given film project is “toyetic” — amenable to being turned into a line of toys — is a key factor in determining what gets remade.

Remakes or sequels?

One problem: Does a live-action remake forestall an animated sequel?

There have been very few theatrically released sequels (“The Rescuers Down Under,” “Fantasia 2000,” “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and “Frozen II”) to any non-Pixar Walt Disney Animation works. While nobody is expecting an animated sequel to “Treasure Planet” or “Brother Bear,” the more recent animations are sequel-friendly for the same reasons that make them remake-friendly.

And there’s the question of whether Disney is doing enough to create new works: Every remake or sequel started off as an original idea, after all.

“They might try making more animated films before making more remakes,” said Spiegel. “They need the first thing to facilitate more of the second thing.”

If even something as seemingly surefire as “The Little Mermaid” seems to be coming up short, that may be good advice.

There’s an argument, though, for celebrating Disney’s more recent string of hits. In his first stint as CEO, Iger revived Walt Disney Animation following its post-Renaissance slump. Hains wondered if Disney shouldn’t celebrate that very recent success. The Walt Disney Company in 2023 is itself kind of reboot. Why not have Iger bring back his greatest hits?

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