Once upon a time, a Disney animated movie was a cinematic event, a milestone in movie history superseded only by whatever the House of Mouse did next.
At the peak of the Golden Age of animation, the studio was renowned for its ingenuity and firsts, starting with the world’s first feature-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937.
The firsts continued for decades: stereo sound feature films (Fantasia); widescreen animated movies (Lady and the Tramp); blending digital production with hand-drawn animation (The Rescuers Down Under); fully computer-generated flicks (Toy Story).
But more recently, Disney has been serving up spoonfuls of deja vu as, having seemingly run out of ideas, it has turned to live-action remakes from its catalogue of timeless classics.
Since 2010, films like The Lion King, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid have been dug out, dusted off and given a fresh lick of paint.
An early run dazzled critics and set the box office alight – but recent films are returning less money and failing to impress reviewers.
Perhaps the most tragic is the remake of that most groundbreaking of films, Snow White – missing the Seven Dwarfs, who were relegated to CGI showpieces.
The film took an underwhelming $204.8 million (£152million) at the box office against its $270m budget and achieved a middling Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 40 per cent.
Lilo & Stitch, out in cinemas today, could reverse that trend, experts say – but whether Disney halts live-action remakes altogether remains to be seen.
Its failure to meet expectations has been so dire Disney has put a live-action remake of Rapunzel remake Tangled on ice.
So what went wrong with Snow White, a remake of a stone-cold classic that kick-started an entire industry; a film that should have have been a box office dead-cert?
Was it because the character was retconned from the Grimm Brothers’ original to be named after a snowstorm, rather than her “skin as white as snow”, or that she was turned into a strong, feminist leader? Was it just that the dwarfs looked a bit weird?
Experts believe it had little to do with the changes at all.
Rob Mitchell, director of theatrical insights at Gower Street Analytics, noted that the Snow White story has been revisited a number of times in the last 20 years: two films, Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror, were released in 2012 alone.
It’s also a film that, despite its timeless quality, is approaching 90 years old, a generation removed from even the grandparents of today’s children.
‘I think the host of pre-release conversations, whether unfair or not, have proven too hard to overcome,’ Mr Mitchell said of the Disney remake.
‘It’s a property both much older and more revisited. That combination just hasn’t put it at the forefront of audience must-sees.’
Looking at box office figures, there might be another reason: audiences are fed up of Disney rehashing its back catalogue – particularly its older flicks.
‘I think there’s just some change of audience taste: these things used to be interesting and original and novel,’ said David A. Gross, who runs the FranchiseRe movie consulting firm.
‘What kind of new experiences are we getting with Aladdin, with Will Smith, or Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson?
‘I wouldn’t say it’s all crashing and burning but for Snow White it’s not working.
‘Forget about the political issues: the reviews are weak and the audience score is not particularly strong.
‘Delaying Tangled is definitely the right decision.’
The journey to where we are now started in the early 1990s, when studio bosses tested the waters of live-action remakes with a largely forgotten Jungle Book remake in 1994 and a retelling of 101 Dalmatians, starring Glenn Close, in 1996.
But they didn’t truly latch onto the idea until 2010 when movie executive Sean Bailey was appointed production president at Walt Disney Studios just as the Tim Burton-directed Alice in Wonderland – a reimagining of the source material – hit cinemas.
It proved to be a runaway hit, making $220.1million in its first weekend and breaking even on a $200m budget, before romping to a $1billion global box office total.
Under Bailey, Disney then pursued a hardcore strategy of developing remakes, and appeared to be on a winning run as it plucked films from its golden era in the 1950s and 60s and gave them a modern-day makeover.
Sleeping Beauty retelling Maleficent and the live-action remake of Cinderella took home $758.5m and $542.4m respectively, while CGI of The Jungle Book remake wowed audiences and brought in almost a billion dollars worldwide.
It looked like an unshakeable formula: take the films that today’s adults had watched on VHS growing up, and add a sprinkle of nostalgia to create box office magic.
Disney then changed tack, adapting the films those adults had seen on the big screen in the early 1990s – to huge success.
Beauty and the Beast, starring Harry Potter’s Emma Watson, made an astonishing $357million in its first weekend and brought in $1.266bn overall.
Aladdin, despite the controversy around casting Will Smith as the iconic Genie, landed on its feet with a $1bn global turnover. The staggeringly realistic Lion King remake, with a $1.6bn box office take, is the 11th highest grossing film of all time.
‘Undeniably the pre-pandemic hits of Aladdin and The Lion King haven’t been matched post-pandemic but those were immensely popular IP titles for whom their original audiences were now the adults taking their children,’ said Rob Mitchell.
They were not critical darlings, but that didn’t matter – their beloved childhood classics were now in cinemas again. So why did Disney then resurrect Dumbo, a movie from 1941, and saddle it with an animal rights storyline?
It fell to earth with all the grace of an elephant. Reimaginings that came before and immediately after returned, on average, five and a half times their budget: Dumbo managed double its $170m budget and no more. Undeterred, Disney pressed on.
A 2019 Lady and the Tramp remake was released exclusively for the new Disney+ streaming service – drummed up on a relatively tiny $60million budget as a made-for-TV movie.
Disney then urged film fans looking forward to the Mulan remake to hand over $30 on top of their Disney+ subscription to watch it at home after the Covid pandemic scuttled its release.
Analyst estimates suggest it made between $60-90m from early digital sales; the firm has never released figures.
The remakes kept coming: a Pinocchio reimagining destined for the cinema was then shuttled off to Disney+ following Dumbo’s poor performance, as was Peter Pan and Wendy, despite the allure of Jude Law as Captain Hook.
But as audiences began returning to cinemas, Disney took its next big live-action gamble: a colourblind-cast remake of The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey.
It should have been a huge hit: the 1989 original was recent and its composer, Alan Menken, returned to write the music alongside Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda.
But amid the controversy over its casting – pitching so-called woke campaigners against critics who were derided as racist – the film returned $569.6m against a huge $240m budget.
It was by no means a loss, but a lesser return on investment compared to previous remakes – and set the stage for Snow White to follow in its tracks.
The issues with the worst-performing remakes are largely the same: CGI can never replicate the magic of hand-drawn characters; new songs added to freshen up the film aren’t as good as those that made it memorable in the first place.
Having seen it one too many times, experts believe audiences have simply had enough.
‘The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Jungle Book, Maleficent… these live-action translations were pre-pandemic smashes,’ says David A. Gross.
‘But the Lion King was a remake; Beauty and the Beast, a remake; it was a different time and these films had their run.
‘Audiences became more demanding for something interesting, new and different. There’s no question Snow White did not meet that expectation.
‘People aren’t going as much as they did before the pandemic either: box office in the US is down 23 per cent on the pre-pandemic average. That’s significant.’
There is a litmus test on the horizon for whether this theory holds true. Remakes of Lilo & Stitch and Moana are up next, beloved by today’s parents and teenagers. Some analysts think this could herald a change.
‘I think audiences take each film as it comes rather than it being a clear trend,’ said Rob Mitchell of Gower Street Partners.
‘While some films have undoubtedly disappointed we’re probably never very far from the film that will reverse the trend and I think that is true in this case – tracking suggests Lilo & Stitch could be a huge hit.
‘The generation that saw and grew up with the original, from 2002, are the young parents of today; the film doesn’t arrive saddled with controversies; fans are very positive about the materials released so far.
‘So I think, in terms of Tangled, there may well be a wait-and-see approach. If Lilo & Stitch is the huge summer hit expected then the production mill may crank up again on this type of title.’
As for Snow White itself, it may yet break even when the film’s ‘second life’ is considered: t-shirts, toys, physical and digital purchases and rentals, soundtrack sales, Disney+ subscriptions.
‘It’s not out of the question that Snow White will recover its money,’ David A. Gross adds. ‘People aren’t paying attention to the bigger picture.
‘A film’s financial performance is way more than just the box office. It’s simply impossible for any observer to know for sure outside of Disney (how well it does).
‘But there is no question that it has performed below what Disney would have liked.’
Sean Bailey stepped aside as head of Walt Disney Studios’ motion picture productions in 2024, replaced by David Greenbaum.
Reports suggest he doesn’t want to completely abandon the live-action remakes – but that for them to be green-lit, there needs to be a raison d’etre, an edge, a new way in.
For what it does next, Disney perhaps needs to return to its roots and carve out more new ideas, even if they’re based on existing stories.
Mufasa, the live-action Lion King prequel released last Christmas, might have riffed off of its source material but ultimately romped to a box office total of $719.5million – more than three and a half times its production budget.
And Cruella, the Emma Stone-fronted reimagining of 101 Dalmatians, also won over critics and ultimately made $233.5million at the box office, becoming one of 2021’s biggest cinematic releases.
‘Mufasa was really quite excellent, and $720million at the box office? There’s really nothing wrong with that,’ adds David A. Gross.
‘Films like that have what I call the “babysitter effect” – it was liked by audiences and families needed something to do with the kids.
‘And it’s a prequel, an original story, where they were trying to do something further and developing the story.’
Elsewhere, animated sequels Inside Out 2 and Moana 2 returned $1.7billion and $1bn last year: returns that recent remakes can only dream of. It may well be that when it comes to remakes, Disney is mis-reading the room.
‘Prior to 2024 there was a significant concern around the profit margins of Disney animation post-pandemic, with titles like Pixar’s Lightyear and Disney’s Strange World failing to draw big audiences and Pixar’s Elemental eventually doing okay but not hitting the heights of the pre-pandemic hits,’ added Rob Mitchell.
‘But 2024 brought two $1bn+ smash-hits in Pixar’s Inside Out 2 and Disney’s Moana 2. So Disney have ridden out similar storms before.
‘Lilo & Stitch is probably going to be the film that will calm these waters, but we’ll have to wait and see.’
Disney declined to comment for this article when approached.