Art films aren’t the only ones having a hard time getting noticed in theaters these days. Nice, trim little family pictures can’t make the multiplex economics work either. Disney pulled the plug on the genre a few years ago, citing the soaring cost of marketing theatrical releases, the collapse of the DVD market (which used to provide a safety net) and competition from living room video-on-demand services. Instead, Disney retrenched to focus exclusively on effects-driven megamovies that jackhammer people away from their Facebook and Fortnite accounts.

“We’re really proud of those smaller films we were making — ‘Queen of Katwe,’ ‘McFarland, USA’ — but we couldn’t get them to work as a business,” Sean Bailey, the president of production for Disney’s flagship movie division, said rather glumly. “Theaters were no longer a hospitable home for them.”

But never fear: The streaming era is here. Like a factory restarting an abandoned assembly line now that boom times have returned, Disney is reviving its smaller-scale movie operation to make content for Disney Plus, the company’s Netflix-style streaming service that blasts off on Tuesday.

Once again, Disney will make inspirational sports dramas, gentle teen romances, live-action animal adventure films and slapstick comedies — original-to-screen stories in the spirit of beloved Disney movies like “Remember the Titans” (2000), “The North Avenue Irregulars” (1979), and, yes, “Old Yeller.”