Kevthewriter weighs in on the fates of Disney live-action remakes and sequels to their classic hits.

Whenever Disney announces a new remake, people everywhere on the internet can’t help but complain and roll their eyes yet it seems like the normies of the world loves these remakes/re-imaginings as every one of them is a hit.

Alice in Wonderland (2010)? Critics didn’t like it, fans of the source material didn’t like it, but it made a billion dollars.

Maleficent (2014)? Made $758 million dollars.

Cinderella (2015)? Made $543 million dollars.

The Jungle Book (2016)? Made $966 million dollars.

And Beauty and the Beast (2017)? That made so much money it just pushed Disney to greenlight MORE remakes!

Then something interesting happened. Disney didn’t make a flat out remake in 2018 but they made two attempts at cashing in on their old properties: sequels to the Winnie the Pooh franchise and Mary Poppins in Christopher Robin and Mary Poppins Returns. And while they didn’t bomb exactly, the grosses for both were a lot lower than the other Disney live action remakes/re-imaginings. Christopher Robin only made $197 million and Mary Poppins Returns made only $349 million.

Then Disney did do another flat out remake earlier this year with Dumbo. And it underperformed too, only making $351 million dollars.

So it seemed like people were finally getting sick of Disney’s constant attempts at making live action remakes/sequels/re-imaginings/etc. of their beloved classics.

Then Aladdin came. And it’s made almost $500 million more dollars than Dumbo in the 5 weeks it’s been in theaters.

And it was announced that The Lion King has already sold almost as many tickets as Avengers Endgame did in its first week in theaters. And it’s not going to be in theaters for almost an entire month.

So why did these three movies underperform at the box office if people are still willing to give other remakes a chance?

Well, individually, there’s many reasons.

For Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh has usually been marketed towards a younger demographic, even moreso than your usual Disney movie. Most of the movies starring Winnie the Pooh have not made a whole lot at the box office, being modest successes at best. Just a quick look shows that Christopher Robin has made the most money of all the Pooh movies. And I think it’s because there’s a stigma that Winnie the Pooh is, to put it bluntly, for babies, which turns many people off from buying a ticket. Sure all of these remakes are targeted towards kids and aimed at kids and people nostalgic for these properties but I think people are more likely to buy a ticket for something aimed at the whole family then for Winnie the Pooh, which has, for the longest time, been marketed specifically to a pre-school demographic. And while Christopher Robin made it clear it was aimed more towards the audience these remakes are aimed at rather than pre-schoolers, the damage was done and the name “Winnie the Pooh” meant “for kids only” to many people. While some got the memo that this movie was for a slightly older demographic than the cartoons, as the box office results show, only so many people did.

Mary Poppins Returns came out literally the same week as Aquaman. And, for once, Warner Brothers made the more successful movie of the two as more kids were interested in seeing a cool superhero movie than Mary Poppins. Sorry Mary, it’s just more in style to be an action packed superhero flick than it is to be a fanciful musical. Plus it had loads of other competition as well including Bumblebee, Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse, The Grinch, it’s not hard to see why it didn’t exactly get close to a billion dollars.

As for Dumbo, two words why that movie disappointed at the box office: Tim. Burton. Alice in Wonderland might have made a billion dollars but one look at Tim’s movies showed that, even if people saw Alice in Wonderland, it doesn’t mean they liked it. Dark Shadows, Frankenweenie, Big Eyes, and Miss Peregrine have all underperformed or outright bombed at the box office. Alice was the last straw for Burton for many people and they haven’t come to see a movie of his since, not even when critics go “No, you don’t understand, it’s actually decent” like they did with Frankenweenie and Big Eyes.

Granted his choice of source material isn’t really helping. Dark Shadows is based off of a once popular but now long forgotten TV show, Big Eyes is based off of an artist whose paintings were popular once upon a time but is not really someone many people would rush out to see a movie about, and Miss Peregrine is based off a book with a niche fanbase. Frankenweenie is a stop motion film and, judging by the box office results of most recent stop motion films (except for Coraline), I think the general public isn’t really fond of stop motion animation, they think it makes the movies seem “old” and “archaic” and the fact that a CGI animated film with a similar look and theme (Hotel Transylvania) was coming out at the same time killed whatever chance it had at the box office.

That being said, I do think Alice in Wonderland caused a stigma against Burton’s name and turned many people off from seeing anything he does ever again. And having him do another remake of a popular Disney film, especially when the trailers made it clear Burton was going to throw out the source material and do his own thing, just like he did with Alice in Wonderland, turned audiences away because they didn’t want to be fooled again like they had been with that movie.

Guy Ritchie doesn’t have quite the same stigma. Sure people think he’s gone downhill as a director but not to the same extent as they do with Burton. I don’t think he’s even really the household name Burton is and, if people do recognize the name, it’s probably more for the Madonna connection than it is for his movies. When people think of Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes, they think of Robert Downey Jr. not Guy Ritchie. When people think of Tim Burton’s Batman, though, they think of Tim Burton just as much as they think of Michael Keaton. This probably helped Aladdin‘s box office.

But I think what also helped is that people are more selective about WHAT re-imaginings, remakes, sequels, etc. they go to see. Yes Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book are all older movies but they were the only Disney remakes that came out in their respective years. Since 2018, though, Disney has been making 2-3 re-imaginings or sequels or remakes a year that it becomes hard for people to keep up.

So I think most people are really just going to be sticking to the Renaissance remakes from now on because their based on the movies their most passionate about. Sure they saw Dumbo, the Winnie the Pooh shorts, and Mary Poppins, and they might have loved them, but it was moreso something their parents or grandparents introduced them to.

But Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King were movies from their generation, movies they remember seeing in theaters, movies they remember getting hyped up for, their just movies that have a more special place in their heart because they remember when those movies were big. They weren’t alive when those older movies were big and, now that newer movies are getting remade, and there’s so many remakes coming out, there’s just no reason to go see the remakes of older films anymore. They’d rather nostalgically remember movies that came out around their time instead because it’s what they connect with the most.

So that’s why Aladdin is a box office hit and why The Lion King is definitely going to be a box office hit even though Dumbo never took flight.

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