Disney remakes classic childhood movies
<p>Walt Disney is on a lucrative nostalgia trip.</p>
<p>Disney's latest re-imagining,<em> Beauty and the Beast,</em> marks a big test of the company's strategy of using live actors to make beloved animated tales more relevant to new generations.</p>
<p>Disney has a dozen more possible remakes in the pipeline that it hopes will build on the success of recent films like <em>Cinderella, The Jungle Book</em> and <em>Maleficent.</em></p>
<p>Despite a couple misses, the strategy has proven a better bet for the live-action studio than trying to create new legends.</p>
<p>Disney has generated NZD$2.8 billion (US$2b) in net profit from six remakes since 2010, according to S&P's Kagan research unit.</p>
<p>That success, coupled with strong showings by other Disney film divisions, including Marvel and Lucasfilm, have made the company the box-office leader.</p>
<p>They're properties that "everybody knows," said Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen.</p>
<p>"It's probably a safer strategy than taking all that money and trying to create new intellectual property."</p>
<p>Disney's live-action strategy isn't without risks. When the company strayed from revisiting its classics, disaster sometimes ensued.</p>
<p><em>The Lone Ranger, Tomorrowland </em>and <em>Million Dollar Arm</em> all failed to recover their costs at the box office, as did the Disney-backed live-action adaptation of the Roald Dahl book<em> The BFG </em>from Steven Spielberg.</p>
<p>Two stories that came right from Disney's playbook, the sequel <em>Alice Through the Looking Glass</em> and<em> Pete's Dragon </em>were also duds.</p>
<p>The Burbank, California-based studio's current run of successful remakes began with <em>Alice in Wonderland</em> in 2010.</p>
<p>Directed by Tim Burton, the film generated more than $1.43 billion in ticket sales.</p>
<p>The success of that film, along with Universal Pictures' 2012 release <em>Snow White and the Huntsman</em>, led Studio Chairman Alan Horn to wonder "Why aren't we doing that?"</p>
<p>Disney's live-action unit, led by Sean Bailey, built on the success in 2014 with <em>Maleficent</em>, a darker take on Sleeping Beauty, featuring Angelina Jolie.</p>
<p>The $250 million production budget yielded $1.08b in global sales.</p>
<p><em>Cinderella</em>, in 2015, went on to score critical and commercial success, and<em> The Jungle Book</em> won an Oscar in February for visual effects.</p>
<p>A sequel is planned.</p>
<p>To Crockett these films are a necessary new hybrid for a younger generation that's grown accustomed to cutting-edge special effects.</p>
<p>"It is very hard for them to watch some of the older movies because the movie-making technology was so different than it is today," he said. "You don't get the same reaction."</p>
<p>While Disney is still making original live-action films, like the Ava DuVernay-directed <em>A Wrinkle in Time </em>due for release in 2018, it's largely focused on remaking classics.</p>
<p><strong>The Lion King, <em>The Little Mermaid, Marry Poppins</em> returns</strong></p>
<p>A live-action Mulan film is due out in November 2018. Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep and Lin-Manuel Miranda, is set for release the following month.</p>
<p>Revivals of <em>Dumbo, The Lion King, Cruella</em> and <em>Aladdin</em> are being developed, and the company may also have in the works <em>The Little Mermaid</em>, a <em>Maleficent</em> sequel, another <em>Peter Pan</em> story and a fresh <em>Pinocchio.</em></p>
<p>"I don't think they're anywhere close to trailing off soon," said Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations.</p>
<p>"They'll run out of their best animated films maybe in a decade. That is not to say they don't continue the adventures in sequels."</p>
<p>Those films will also help Disney battle superhero fatigue in its Marvel division.</p>
<p>Horn, Disney's studio head, said at the <em>Beauty and the Beast</em> premiere that the company remains committed to mining Disney's best characters.</p>
<p>Remakes of classics "are quintessential Walt Disney company properties and we believe to our toes that we are the company that should bring these stories to the screen in live action," Horn said.</p>
<p>"We want to do so with an underscored emphasis on quality - they have to be good."</p>
<p><em>Written by Anousha Sakoui and Nicole Piper. First appeared on <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Stuff.co.nz.</span></strong></a></em></p>
