I've been seeing this idea that Disney is running out of films to remake since it's remade pretty much all of its Renaissance era animated films. I thought it would be fun to take a look at Disney's history of remaking their own IP, especially since the research involved digging through a lot of old, forgotten Disney obscurities.
Disney has been in the remake game for decades, and there are a lot more Disney remakes out there than you think there are. Here are some of the highlights:
1982 - Disney attempted to turn some of their popular live action movies from the '60s and '70s into television series for CBS in the early '80s. The only one that made it to air was "Herbie the Love Bug," a sequel series to "The Love Bug," (1968) which ran for five episodes in 1982. Two other pilots aired as episodes of the "Walt Disney" anthology program that year - "Beyond Witch Mountain," which functioned as the third movie in the "Witch Mountain" franchise, and "The Adventures of Pollyanna," which has the dubious honor of being the first feature length Disney remake that I could identify, retelling the story of "Pollyanna" (1960) with a wholly new cast.
1988-1989 - NBC took over airing the Disney anthology series, retitled "The Magical World of Disney" in 1988. They commissioned a new set of "Davy Crockett" adventures, based on the popular miniseries that aired as part of "Disneyland" in the '50s. They also remade "The Absent-Minded Professor" (1961) as a TV movie starring Harry Anderson from "Night Court," and Keisha-Knight Pulliam from "The Cosby Show" played the title role in "Polly," another remake of "Pollyanna" with an African-American cast. This means that the first race-swapped Disney heroine wasn't Ariel, but Pollyanna. Both TV movies did well enough that they got sequels the following year.
1993 - "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" is the first theatrically released Disney remake, based on "The Incredible Journey" (1963). The vast majority of Disney's early remakes were of their live action films. While Disney was known for their animated films, their catalog was also dominated by wholesome live-action adventure and fantasy films aimed at families. Many featured animal leads, and it makes perfect sense that an update of "The Incredible Journey" was one of their first major remakes.
1994 - The first Disney remake based on one of their animated films only technically qualifies. "Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book" starring Jason Scott Lee was largely based on the Rudyard Kipling "Jungle Book" stories, and only counts as a remake of Disney's "Jungle Book" (1967) because it includes some Disney characters like King Louie. In this version, Mowgi is an adult, the animals don't talk, there are a pack of British villains to contend with, and the story plays more like "Indiana Jones" than Kipling or Disney. A direct-to-video prequel, "The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story" (1998) was actually closer to the original.
1994-1995 - Meanwhile, over in the television division, Disney struck a deal with ABC to remake a slew of their live action family films as "ABC Family Movies." This resulted in TV movie remakes of "The Shaggy Dog" (1959), "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" (1969), "Escape to Witch Mountain" (1975), and "Freaky Friday" (1976), which all aired in 1994 and 1995. A remake/legasequel for "The Love Bug" came in 1997 starring Bruce Campbell, and introducing Herbie's mortal enemy, Horace the Hate Bug. The Disney Channel also got a remake of "The Barefoot Executive" (1971) in 1995.
1996 - The remake of "101 Dalmatians" (1961) feels like the first real attempt to adapt an animated Disney film into a live action one. And they picked the right one to start with, since all the characters are either human or animals, and Disney has a long history of animal movies. This was the era where Disney was actually remaking a lot of cartoons into live action, though it was other studios' cartoons like "George of the Jungle," "Dudley Do-Right," and "Inspector Gadget." And the whole trend was actually kicked off by Amblin's "The Flintstones," which made large amounts of money in 1994.
1997 - 2009 - The majority of the theatrical Disney remakes going into the 2000s were still of live action films. 1997 saw a new "The Absent-Minded Professor" remake starring Robin Williams titled "Flubber," and Christina Ricci in an updated "That Darn Cat!" (1965). Then came Lindsay Lohan, who would star in "The Parent Trap" in 1998 , "Freaky Friday," in 2003, and "Herbie Fully Loaded" in 2005. "The Shaggy Dog" became a Tim Allen vehicle in 2006, and "Race to Witch Mountain" rebooted the "Witch Mountain" franchise in 2009 with Dwayne Johnson. And to date, that's the last of Disney's theatrical remakes of their live action catalog. Aside from a musical version of "Freaky Friday" in 2018 that premiered as a Disney Channel Original, all the Disney remakes going forward would be of their animated films, starting with…
2010 - Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" really doesn't have much connection with the 1951 animated "Alice in Wonderland." The new "Alice" functions more like a sequel, and it takes most of its visual cues from Burton and illustrator John Tenniel. However, between the popularity of Johnny Depp and the premium on newly repopularized 3D event films, "Alice" made a billion dollars at the box office in an era where that didn't often happen. As a result, Disney would end up following the "Alice" template of CGI-heavy spectacle to some very bitter ends.
2010 - I just want to acknowledge that "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," based on the Mickey Mouse segment of "Fantasia" (1940), somehow transmogrified into a YA adventure film starring Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel, exists. I don't understand why, but it exists.
2014 - "Maleficent" wasn't actually the first Disney film to do the whole, "let's retell this familiar fairy tale from a supporting character's point of view," thing. That honor goes to the "Gepetto" TV movie starring Drew Carrey, created for the ABC version of "The Wonderful World of Disney" in 2000. I'm not sure if these should be counted as remakes, but some of the other Disney remakes have about as much in common with their original films as "Maleficent" does with "Sleeping Beauty," so it doesn't feel right to leave them off. "Maleficent" takes a few familiar images from the 1959 cartoon and recreates one pivotal scene, but mostly tells an original story, repositioning an iconic villain as a heroine. The 2018 "Christopher Robin" movie and the 2021 "Cruella" movie mostly follow the same pattern.
2015-2016 - The remakes of "Cinderella" (1950), "The Jungle Book" (1967), and "Pete's Dragon" (1977) seem to be the best regarded Disney remakes of their animated (and partially animated) films. It's no secret why. These are director-driven, thoughtfully made films that use the animated classics as a jumping off point, but don't resemble them much. "The Jungle Book" is the closest, but has an entirely different ending, and largely cut the songs. If the remakes had continued in this vein, we'd probably all have been much better off. Unfortunately…
2017-2019 - Here's where we went off the rails. Once Disney started remaking its Renaissance era animated films, the remakes became almost carbon copies of the originals. Any original material was shoehorned around recreations of existing set pieces and musical numbers. And Disney was well rewarded for this approach. Remakes of "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Aladdin" (1992), and "The Lion King" (1994) each made over a billion dollars at the box office, and "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" were released less than three months apart. The success of "The Jungle Book" and improvements in CGI seem to have particularly emboldened filmmakers to start tackling more difficult fantasy concepts.
That brings us to now, where a pile of lackluster titles over the past few years remaking "Dumbo" (1941), "Lady and the Tramp" (1955), "Mulan" (1998), and "Pinocchio" (1940) have pretty well wrecked the public's appetite for more Disney remakes. I honestly like both of this year's attempts - remakes of "The Little Mermaid" (1989) and "Peter Pan" (1953) - but I understand why many others don't. There are a lot more of these films coming up, and frankly I've stopped being upset about them. Disney has habitually gone back to its existing IP over and over again for decades, and they're not going to stop.
And they're not going to run out of titles to remake. Yes, they've burned through the more popular titles, but there are a ton left. There are vast sections of the Disney catalog that haven't been touched yet, like their dark '80s fantasy films and the early 2000s Disney Channel Originals. And if Disney somehow manages to remake every single film of theirs that ever made any money, they'll just remake them again with a different twist or in a different style, the way they did with "Freaky Friday" and "Pollyanna." I expect we'll see "Ursula" at some point. "Straight to streaming" has replaced TV movies, but everyone is still as susceptible to nostalgia as they ever were.
So, buckle up for Questlove's "The Aristocats" and Sarah Polley's "Bambi." We're going around again.
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