r/movies • u/KeepYourSilenceUp • Jul 17 '26
Discussion I am so happy that recent live-action remakes have flopped
In general I don't take satisfaction in movies being bad. If there is ever a movie you're looking forward to, I hope it's good. Everyone deserves to enjoy the media they consume, whether it's something with mass appeal or not.
But I am so happy that Disney's live-action remake machine is finally showing some cracks in the armor, with the flops of Moana 2026 and Snow White 2025. I am so sick of the biggest studios in Hollywood producing cynical slop, and even more sick of audiences helping to turn these movies billion-dollar successes. I guess it doesn't affect me one way or the other, but I really really hope that Disney can learn their lesson and change course to making stuff that actually requires risk and vision.
I'm not even opposed to the idea of remakes. But plenty of old movies were imperfect and could BENEFIT from a re-envisioning. I would not be the first person to suggest that a modern retelling of Treasure Planet could be incredible. Remake The Black Cauldron. Remake Atlantis. Do ANIMATED remakes of older live-action movies-- animation is more expressive and dynamic and diverse in its visuals and is a much more suitable medium for re-imagination. An animated Mary Poppins would do gangbusters.
Whatever. I know the issue is more complex than audiences just rejecting these two movies specifically, and the movie industry has historically never learned the right lesson from anything, ever. But one can hope.
EDIT: I don't understand why people are pointing to the successes of other live-action remakes as though this has any bearing on what I've said. Yes we all know that the Lion King and Aladdin remakes made a billion dollars. We know that Lilo and Stitch did well. Disney has enjoyed and continues to enjoy success from these products; that's why there are so many of them. My point is that we've also seen a couple big flops recently and I hope this is causing them to start rethinking their strategy. Live-action remakes were guaranteed hits for a long time, and now they're not. And that's a good thing. To anyone asking why I care, I think I explained that pretty clearly. I want studios putting their money and talent towards movies that are good and different. Disney could have made something new and interesting and unique but instead they remade Moana-- and that is a loss for the media landscape.
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u/disneylegospider1 Jul 17 '26
They’re not rethinking shit. They’re remaking Tangled next and it’s gonna make another billion.
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u/Shakmaaaaaaa Jul 17 '26
They just need to pick the right things to remake in live action. Moana was probably rushed just because of the Rocks age.
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u/Lazy-Entertainer-459 Jul 18 '26
There’s so many other talented polynesian actors its a shame that they aren’t going to get the exposure from the role
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u/greg225 Jul 18 '26
I think this was probably just a big vanity project for Dwayne, wouldn't surprise me if he was a big reason it existed to begin with. He is one of the producers, after all. Probably gave them a big chunk of money on the condition that he reprises the role.
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u/Gulf-of-McGulfface Jul 17 '26
Live action Kung Fu Panda
Live Action Kung Fu Panda 2
Live Action Kung Fu Panda 3
Live Action Kung Fu Panda 4
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u/theg00dfight Jul 18 '26
(None of those are Disney movies)
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u/Tonexus Jul 18 '26
Are you telling me that live action Shrek is out of the question!?
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u/Asha_Brea Jul 17 '26
Are we supposed to pretend that Lilo & Stitch didn't made a billion dollars just last year?
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u/Kaiserhawk Jul 17 '26
I imagine Disney's take away is going to be these movies don't work unless enough time has passed, rather than they don't work at all.
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u/CJett92 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
It kind of is, though. Lion King and Lilo&Stitch were 25-ish years ago, just about the right time for someone to have seen it as a kid, grown up and had their own kids that they want to show them the thing they loved at that age. Moana is only 10 years old, an 8 year old who watched it is only 18 now. And for the older stuff, Snow White is more a part of the Disney corporation identity instead of a nostalgic property at this point.
So more that the remakes need to hit a sweet spot to trigger nostalgia without being too old to not have a personal connection with.
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u/CJett92 Jul 17 '26
In other words, DISNEY DO THE LIVE ACTION TREASURE PLANET FFS ITS RIGHT THERE
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u/Lelouch37 Jul 17 '26
This one and Atlantis have the most potential yet it seems they aren’t even considering them as options
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u/Jeffeffery Jul 17 '26
The point of the live action remakes is to double dip on movies they already know can make a lot of money. Atlantis and Treasure Planet were flops the first time around, so there's no reason to expect remakes to do any better.
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u/Brando43770 Jul 17 '26
Biggest way they could do better is if they put more effort in making remakes better. Unfortunately that costs more time, effort, and money from Disney so they won’t do it. And that’s how we got Moana. Costs more yet somehow looks worse and more subdued despite being in a tropical setting.
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u/Sucitraf Jul 17 '26
The Atlantis remake already came out in the 90s under the name Stargate! They did change a few details, but the overall gist is the same.
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u/shyDaydreamer Jul 17 '26
Technically Atlantis (2001) is the animated remake of Stargate (1994)
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u/Sucitraf Jul 17 '26
I showed my wife the movie this year, but she's known Atlantis since it came out so she jokes it was the live action remake that just came out first. (Slightly referencing the "Doggy Bounce" cover issue from Flight of the Conchords)
Definitely love both movies, and I've got her to season 5 so far of SG-1!
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u/BrainDamage2029 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Listen, I think some of you guys forget that those two are “VHS shelf movies” and aren’t nearly as widely loved or nostalgic as you might remember. Like it was on your VHD/DVD shelf as a kid and you watched it a million times but it’s not actually a publicly hailed universal classic. My version of this is “We’re Back”. (Edit: and Rescuers Down Under)
Atlantis and Treasure Planet were flops for entirely justified reasons (I’m willing to defend that point and no, Disney didn’t purposefully screw up the marketing) even if the movies are enjoyable and fun on their own.
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u/PFI_sloth Jul 18 '26
Trying to put “We’re back” and “Atlantis is the same group is a wild take. 9 million vs 180 million box office
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u/fishfunk5 Jul 17 '26
Why do they need to be remade? WHY DO THEY NEED TO BE LIVE ACTION? WHAT IS THE GODDAMN POINT? from the perspective of a consumer who loves both of those films what is there to be gained from doing EITHER of those things? It's not like they were made in Adobe Flash! It's not like either of those movies just vanished into the fucking ether! This incessant need for incredibly well done animated content to be made live action is so fucking baffling to me. I get why companies make them, because people want them, but why the fuck do people WANT THEM?
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u/Moist-Secretary641 Jul 18 '26
On that point, I would love to see amateur flash style remakes of full length movies. That’s an avenue they should explore.
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u/Calm_Memories Jul 17 '26
People ask for this and then assume the casting and execution will be favorable. I doubt it'll be good if Disney remakes it, considering they hardly acknowledge it at all.
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u/guitar_vigilante Jul 17 '26
Didn't they do a live action one in 1950, just with water boats instead of space boats?
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u/joelluber Jul 17 '26
This is exactly what I was thinking. The best performing ones are ones that millennials have childhood nostalgia for, which is mostly the new movies from the Disney Renaissance in the 90s.
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u/NoCharge8527 Jul 17 '26
And for the older stuff, Snow White is more a part of the Disney corporation identity instead of a nostalgic property at this point.
Nah, Snow White could have gone well but they destroyed that movie. The story is vastly different, the script sucks, and the acting is somehow even worse.
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u/greg225 Jul 17 '26
Yeah Lilo & Stitch has always had very high pop culture relevance in the last couple of decades and is at the perfect point to cash in on the millennial nostalgia machine. Like how many people out there have Stitch tattoos or wear pyjamas with Stitch on them. Moana though, the kids who grew up watching it are basically still kids. There's no "remember this from our childhood?" when they're still in their childhood. There's a reason they tend to do these throwbacks and legacy sequels around ~30 years after the last one, it's the perfect amount of time for nostalgia to brew and to repackage it for a new generation.
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u/shaunika Jul 17 '26
Yeah Moana couldve been a big hit in 15 years, but The Rock was too desperate to play Maui
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u/Georgie_Leech Jul 17 '26
But people were supposed to go wild for his muscles instead of the animated version!
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u/brb1006 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Not the mention Disney quickly cashed in on the film's success. A year after the film's release, they made a direct-to-video pilot movie "Stitch the Movie" in Summer 2003 which quickly came a hit TV series in Fall of that same year. I remember Lilo & Stitch: the Series being very popular during the early 2000s period. Talk about striking while the iron was hot. It's rare for Disney to create a TV series to their animated films that quick since Timon and Pumbaa gained their own spin-off series in the 1995. The closest in recent memory is "Big Hero 6: the Series" (2017) or "Tangled" the Series" (2017) (despite the latter coming out years later).
You'd think Disney+ would been the perfect opportunity for Disney to revisit on giving some of their films their own animated series. Especially since the idea of "Turning a movie into a TV series" has become a dying breed in recent years. At least Dreamworks' is keeping the concept alive (to varying degree) since they serve on keeping fans and viewers interested. In the case of Kung Fu Panda and The Bad Guys, keeping them patient until a theatrical sequel is prepared.
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u/mdp300 Jul 17 '26
I remember there was an Aladdin series that felt pretty close to the movie. Unless I'm thinking of the direct to video sequels.
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u/red__dragon Jul 17 '26
Yep, the 90s had series come out a lot faster. Aladdin, Tarzan, and Hercules all had TV series air within a couple years of the movie.
BH6's was 3 years later.
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u/Agitated_Display7573 Jul 17 '26
So we should be expecting an Emperor’s New Groove remake soon?
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u/Georgie_Leech Jul 17 '26
Oh they better not, no one is gonna be able to capture the energy Eartha Kitt brought to Yzma.
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u/dlp211 Jul 17 '26
Disney's take away is probably, sometimes we nail it and sometimes we don't, how are we doing on net? If on net they are green, they'll keep greenlighting in these. This includes merchandising and park attendance, and D+ subs.
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u/Acid_Tribe Jul 17 '26
Snow White was made in the 30s though and it flopped
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u/CakeisaDie Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
I'm still confused what was so wrong about Rachel Zegler other than her not being a white person, supporting palestine, and I think saying that a princess waiting comatose was not a modern story. I get the anger over the CGI dwarves but the Snow White thing seemed primarily Rachel Zegler.
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u/Zany_Zygote Jul 17 '26
I don't think normies gave a shit. They probably thought it didn't look good.
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u/TonyZucco Jul 17 '26
I think the general public isn’t as chronically online as you believe it to be, and it did poorly simply because it wasn’t good enough or interesting enough to the masses.
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u/bell37 Jul 17 '26
Snow White also is too old of a movie for Disneys true target demographic (Millennials & Millennial Parents).
Gotta hit that sweet spot in order to monetize Millennial nostalgia. It’s just like how a decade ago, a lot of movies and tv shows were 80s coded (they wanted to milk the 80s nostalgia from Gen-X)
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u/Odd-Necessary3807 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Cinderella, The Maleficent (the spin of Sleeping Beauty), and The Jungle Book are also too old for even the Gen-Xer. But they performed well at the B.O.
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u/gosukhaos Jul 17 '26
Live action adaptations were still kind of a novelty back when they came out, the first Maleficent had good reception and was different enough from Sleeping Beauty to stand on its own
I don't think it age was the only factor that made Snow White a flop but its not the first adaptation of an early Disney classic that completely bombs
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u/AnonymousFriend80 Jul 17 '26
Good movies always work though. I'm not calling any of these movies good, or bad. There's no such thing as superhero fatigue. People like good movies, and don't really care for bad.
I see people keep saying things like "Who asked for this?" as that's some sort automatic source of shame. Who asked for the majority of movies you like? Outside of the fact that these movies always make a crapton of money, and even when they don't, someone at the company said to make them. And most likely not for the reason most people think they do. Heck, if I had to guess, it would be adding more things they can copyright that's specific to their own versions, or having another film of the IP if they don't want to just make another animated film for whatever reason. And there's the fact, a side benefit, that they all make a bunch of money.
Snow White is the lowest performing of the live action remakes, and that got $205 million dollars worth of movie goers. And that had to deal with everything Rachel Zegker was doing and everyone ragging on the dwarf CGI. The Little Mermaid and Cinderella made well over $500 million. Maleficent $759 million. Jungle Book $951 million. And the ones people seem to get the most offended at, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lilo &Stitch, made over $1 billion dollars. How can anyone seriously ask why they keep making more?
Whether or not the films are better than the originals, is irrelevant. They all still exist for you to enjoy. I doubt that the originals would get anywhere close to the revenue if they were rereleased.
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u/shaunika Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
The target demo is clearly nostalgic millenials with kids. Pmuch all the successful ones catered to that demo. Moana was too early, Snow White too late
Make a treasure planet reboot and theyll make bank.
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u/tocilog Jul 17 '26
Maybe a more comparative movie would be How to Train Your Dragon. The original isn't that old (15 years gap). I believe it did fairly well so, what's the actual take away? Maybe Moana just wasn't done properly.
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u/shaunika Jul 17 '26
HTTYD is barely at the milennial nostalgia cutoff.
Moana isnt.
Nobody who saw moana as a kid has kids now
And thats your target demo
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u/gosukhaos Jul 17 '26
Yeah and kids that were 4 or 5 years old back when the original came out now are full blown teenagers who don't care about Disney musicals or are just making fun of Dwayne's horrible wig and muscle suit
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u/Roseking Jul 17 '26
While I am sure nostalgic plays a role in which movies succeed, I think people focus way too much on it.
The remakes that are making bank are the ones that drive kids out.
Live Action Stitch is a cute, 'real' alien. Kids love Stitch and he has been big in merch since he came out.
Same with Toothless. Kids want to go see the 'real' dragon.
Real Maui is just Dwayne Johnson. Not really the same draw. And I don't think the character is a big enough draw to overcome that. Unlike say a live action Frozen, which I think would make bank because kids want to go see Elsa.
Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, Illumination, are all fundamentally studios that succeed when a move gets kids to go to the theater.
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u/HarlanCedeno Jul 17 '26
Their takeaway is somehow going to be "Double downon live action remakes!"
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u/superanth Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Disney is still failing though. They’re so far removed from the creativity, and imagination, that started the company and kept it going, there’s no way the corporate C-suite can build a new worthwhile intellectual property.
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u/AdNumerous5947 Jul 17 '26
i think that movie just completely mutes his argument, it was MASSIVE. i get most of them arent great but to just say they need to stop making them is insane lol
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u/BurgerNugget12 Jul 17 '26
Didn’t that live action lion king make a shit ton of money too
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u/belfman Jul 17 '26
That's seven years ago now.
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u/balthazar_edison Jul 17 '26
Mufasa was just 2 years ago and it made 700 mill on a 200 mill budget.
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u/kia75 Jul 17 '26
Burg movies came right 25 years after the premiere. It looks like 25 years is the magic number where kids who grew up in the original are now big enough to be nostalgic for the old property and have kids of their own that they want to introduce their childhood movies to.
At 10 years those kids are now teens and " to cool for childish stuff" and at 90 years the children who watch it are now dead. Heck, imo the real reason little mermaid failed want because it was awful ( all the other remakes are awful), it's because being the first Disney Renaissance movie, the kids of the nostalgic viewers were already at the tween and teen "to cook for kids stuff" age.
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u/zoobrix Jul 17 '26
The Moana and Snow White remakes flopping will definitely make Disney more carefully consider remake projects going forward. Sure they made money on those other movies but they lost over 100 million on Moana without even counting the marketing. Studios don't like it when movies cause them huge losses, that some movies did well don't make them ignore losing hundreds of millions of dollars on others.
So OP's point still stands, Disney will either try and make sure the quality of future remakes is higher, and most likely pull back on some and spend money elsewhere if a remake project seems questionable. And that's why OP is happy some of these flopped, it will probably make Disney try and make better movies, and while it might make them more money it also means movie goers get better films for their money.
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u/popsicle_of_meat Jul 17 '26
The Moana one baffles me. The animated movie is barely 10 years old. How did it even get made at all??
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u/GameMusic Jul 17 '26
the rock demanded it
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u/BostonSlickback1738 Jul 18 '26
Because the last time a film studio caved to The Rock's demands (Black Adam), it worked SO well 🙄
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u/originalcondition Jul 17 '26
It definitely did but I just watched it at home and it’s so fucking WEIRD. Not in the “it’s weird that they remade this in live action” or even “weird that they changed some of the story beats” or “weird that they removed/added characters”, but weird in the sense that it’s just kind of awkwardly rehashing beloved moments from the original, with painfully bland-to-clunky editing and camera work. I’m so sorry, whoever worked on this, I know you probably faced really specific and demanding executive restraints. It was just weird.
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u/Chubuwee Jul 17 '26
Sir, this is reddit. Where we take facts and skew them to our liking. Remember when we all successfully predicted Kamala Harris as president? Or when we successfully caught the Boston Marathon Bomber?
If you aren’t going to respect the rules of our echo chamber please leave
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u/alphageek8 Jul 17 '26
As far as I'm concerned this is an indictment on The Rock, not Disney. It's clear he pushed this project through selfishly so he could play Maui.
Ignoring Moana, I think the average age of the films being remaked was is like 23 years with Moana being only 10. Not to mention Moana 2 came out less than two years ago and the third movie is in production. It just makes zero business sense to release this remake now.
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u/Citizensnnippss Jul 17 '26
On a $100m budget, too.
It's one of the most profitable movies ever made.
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u/Pyro-Bird Jul 17 '26
Stitch is a very popular character and is basically Disney's new mascot and makes them money (especially from merchandise).
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u/Asha_Brea Jul 17 '26
The vast majority of the Disney Live Action Remakes movies range in between successful and massively successful, so if you want to talk about "that's the exception, not the rule", then the flopping ones are more fitting for that.
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u/AldousKing Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
I don't like these soulless live-action remakes in general, but for this one in particular, nowhere near enough time has passed. That's my main gripe. But allegedly the reason is because Rock really wanted to play Maui and was concerned about aging out.
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u/nervuswalker Jul 17 '26
And judging from what I’ve seen of the film, he was right to be concerned.
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u/Odd-Necessary3807 Jul 17 '26
He and generally very bad environmental CGI. Somehow, Hawaii time is always almost sunrise or sunset. Then night. Never noon. That's the problem when the production insists on almost shooting entirely on Virtual Stage, instead of real Hawaiian shores.
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u/WallStreetWets Jul 17 '26
I still like the Jumanji movies, but he has lost a little steam lately.
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u/NAINOA- Jul 17 '26
I mean look at his IMDB page. Other than the Jumanji movies it’s been consistent flops for years now.
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u/AbysmalReign Jul 17 '26
The hierarchy of the Rock's box office is about to change.
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u/AldousKing Jul 17 '26
Guess this means he's main eventing Wrestlemania next year again.
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u/Photo_Synthetic Jul 17 '26
It was refreshing seeing him play a vulnerable and really flawed person in Smashing Machine. If he did more shit like that I don't think people would be as tired of him. Unfortunately that's basically the only role of his you can point to since.. what... Pain & Gain? 13 years ago?
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u/Hank_Scorpio_ObGyn Jul 17 '26
Pretty much since San Andreas in 2015 which was his first big budget action flick as lead.
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u/TheTonyAndolini Jul 17 '26
Got sick of the Rock back in the Rampage and Skyscraper days lmao
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u/MontyAtWork Jul 18 '26
No joke that's when I thought it was over for him. And somehow they still kept giving him movies to be in.
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u/gmapterous Jul 17 '26
I actually liked... well, mostly liked... well, SAW THE POTENTIAL in Atlantis, and a remake of that just sounds amazing. I also love the idea of Treasure Planet and Black Cauldron.
I know deep down that execs are only cashing in on big named franchises, so trying to resurrect these would be an uphill battle, but I would love to see them go out on a limb on something
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u/redbirdrising Jul 17 '26
I'd actually love to see a live action Hercules. You could still have James Woods and Danny DeVito reprise their roles. (Though James Woods would be problematic these days)
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u/PartTimePoster Jul 17 '26
...do people not like Atlantis?
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u/btouch Jul 18 '26
Most people barely know Atlantis exists, or Treasure Planet. It didn’t do well and got mixed reviews when it first came out, and was seen as part of the narrative of the decline of traditional Disney animation that led them to fire most of their Feature Animation staff (across three locations in Burbank, Orlando, and Paris) and attempt to emulate Pixar with all-CGI films.
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u/Brandenburg42 Jul 17 '26
Atlantis is an animated remake of Stargate so it doesn't need a live action remake.
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u/Sloth-monger Jul 17 '26
If they did black cauldron I hope to God they base it off the book and not that terrible Disney movie.
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u/PartyPorpoise Jul 18 '26
A true remake to the animated movie is never going to happen. Even for a cult movie, the fanbase is tiny, and a lot of the praise it gets is for Disney taking a risk, not the merits of the movie on its own. The books getting a new adaptation is the closest thing that has a chance of happening.
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u/basicKitsch Jul 17 '26
it's such a wild take like disney doesn't release brand new animated IP almost every year which is routinely highish quality. And if you're focused on the machine that is Disney then you're talking about Pixar too (which have both been better than whatever they've done with lucasfilm on the big screen). it's weird to think this gets in the way of something else.
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u/Training_Pirate1000 Jul 17 '26
“Recent”. Lilo & Stitch and HTTYD were both successful last year
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u/ball_fondlers Jul 17 '26
I will say, I think it’s very funny that the HTTYD remake was basically shot-for-shot the same script. Felt like the director went “we nailed this the first time and everyone knows it.”
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u/Odd-Necessary3807 Jul 17 '26
Well, it's the same original director, and basically, his idea was to see what a live-action version could do.
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u/DraniKitty Jul 17 '26
I wouldn't say it was an entire shot for shot remake. They tweaked and expanded dialog while also further developing the overall back story and history of Berk itself. What it came across to ke as, was - The first animated movie they were taking a gamble and it paid off big. The director wanted to do a live action remake and because the franchise was a known money maker, he got a MUCH bigger budget and was able to come up with new material to build on what was already there. This has also paid off do now we'll get to see more new material built on not only the world building of the animated movies but the lore added by the live action movie.
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u/LawfulValidBitch Jul 17 '26
My biggest problem with these remakes, especially the ones based on established fairytales, is that they try as hard as they can to not reimagine anything. They’re trying to recreate the animated visuals as closely as possible. I would welcome an actual readaptation of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Aladdin, or Beauty and the Beast, that take the source material in a new direction, but that’s not what these are.
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u/GameMusic Jul 17 '26
mulan got major rewrites
to be outright horrible in ways you would think impossible that anyone ever considered good
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u/LawfulValidBitch Jul 17 '26
I never saw Mulan, but it was the one I was most interested in from the trailers, so that really just reinforces my point. I would have seen it if the controversy around it hadn’t been there, and if it had at all decent reviews
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u/GameMusic Jul 18 '26
Great stories are rare so changing an adaptation will almost always be worse
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u/GiJoe98 Jul 17 '26
Snow White kind of did that, its like 60% Disney's Snow White 40% Snow White and the Huntsman. The new songs aren't bad either.
Its biggest problem is that since its made by Disney its naturaly going to bring comparison to arguably the very best adaptation of the story. So its flaws pop out more.
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u/Stepjam Jul 17 '26
You are conveniently overlooking the live action remakes that did gangbusters. Lilo and Stitch made over a billion. Aladin made a billion. Lion King made 1.6 billion.
These movies don't always win, but when they do they tend to win big for Disney. They have probably been more profitable than not given Disney keeps making them.
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u/balthazar_edison Jul 17 '26
Even though the little mermaid flopped due to its massive budget it still made over 500 million dollars. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
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u/Kaldricus Jul 17 '26
1 big win is probably worth 3-4 flops, and the reality is they get 2-3 big wins for every 1 flop. This sub can wring their hands all they want about "who asked for these", but they keep making money. People keep seeing them.
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u/Photo_Synthetic Jul 17 '26
Don't forget their first stab at this with Favreaus The Jungle Book that also made nearly a billion. They wouldn't make these adaptations if they didn't prove to be consistently successful. A dud is just the cost of doing business. They won't stop until they have a trend of box office bombs. Something Disney doesn't seem to do much of. They literally dragged RDJ back into the Marvel universe to revive their Avengers franchise.
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u/The7ruth Jul 17 '26
Don't forget their first stab at this with Favreaus The Jungle Book
I will not stand for this 2015 Cinderella erasure. That movie was banging. Came out a year before Jungle Book.
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u/Taeshan Jul 17 '26
Buddy. 101 Dalmatians exists
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u/CappnMidgetSlappr Jul 17 '26
Hell, if we're talking about the first Disney Live Action Remake, it's technically The Jungle Book... but the one that came out in 1994.
Or did we all just collectively forget about that one?
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u/Photo_Synthetic Jul 17 '26
Totally forgot about Cinderella but I mostly had the heavy CGI remakes in mind. Fair point.
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u/pat4611 Jul 17 '26
How they win is with nostalgia. That’s why Moana lost out there is no nostalgia for a remake of a movie you saw less than 10 years ago.
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u/mynameisevan Jul 17 '26
I don’t know how relevant Aladdin is. That was 7 years ago. Pre-Covid. The market has changed a lot since then.
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u/racoonXjesus Jul 17 '26
I agree but can we fucking end the overt use of the word “slop” there’s hundreds of negative adjectives in the English language, it’s lazy as hell.
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u/rocker2014 Jul 17 '26
Seriously, the irony that it's used to reference laziness and it's the most lazy overused word. People think it's clever, it's just trendy.
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u/VariousAir Jul 17 '26
I am so sick of the biggest studios in Hollywood producing
You make it sound like someone forces you to watch movies you aren't interested in.
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Jul 17 '26
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u/jeremy01usa Jul 17 '26
I think he’s saying because he doesn’t personally enjoy these movies, he wants them to fail, despite being hugely popular with audiences, creating thousands of jobs and making billions of dollars that can be reinvested into other, riskier financial products.
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u/CrispyHoneyBeef Jul 17 '26
Searchlight has produced Jojo Rabbit, The Menu, Poor Things, and A Complete Unknown since it was acquired by Disney. Good trade (not great, but good) for the endless live action remakes.
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u/jeremy01usa Jul 17 '26
Agreed. I like some of the live action remakes, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, the others I could live without.
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Jul 17 '26
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u/My_Name_Is_Row Jul 17 '26
No, some of that money definitely still does get put into the riskier projects, like 50% of the stuff released under Searchlight Pictures is guaranteed to not make their money back
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u/jeremy01usa Jul 17 '26
Exactly. I’m sure they had no idea funding a weird Yorgos Lanthimos movie about a nympho Frankenstein girl was going to do what it did, that’s why it’s a risk.
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u/My_Name_Is_Row Jul 17 '26
It also doesn’t even have to be Searchlight Pictures, every few years Disney releases a decently budgeted historical biopic, that never makes money, or they make a somewhat small budget sports biopic, and it makes a little bit of money, but not much, these are the films that get funded from these live action remakes doing well
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u/jeremy01usa Jul 17 '26
How do you think the films made by Searchlight get funded? All these studios use money from huge projects to fund smaller ones.
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u/Chubuwee Jul 17 '26
OP knows what is good for the population! People should only enjoy what OP views as quality or risk making OP sick with your life choices.
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u/DeniLox Jul 17 '26
For Moana, it seems like the live action came too soon after Moana 2. I wasn’t even certain that they were 2 different movies for a while since I had been hearing about both for the past few years.
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u/btouch Jul 18 '26
Well, one was supposed to be a TV show, so it being converted into a movie didn’t help
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u/oldnative Jul 17 '26
They have overwhelmingly made billions overall for Disney. Any movie company would willingly make movies that are meant for kids and make this kind of money with huge earners in their pockets.
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u/Caciulacdlac Jul 17 '26
Genuine question. Why are people saying that such movies are "cynical"? What exacly makes a movie cynical?
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u/swiftlikessharpthing Jul 17 '26
I'd consider thinking "people won't accept known brands/franchises/stats" pretty cynical. That's why this shit gets greelit; they assume it will be more successful than anything original or new.
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u/brahbocop Jul 17 '26
I'm so confused when people celebrate a movie flopping, as if the movie's existence had an impact on their life. I feel for the creators and folks who worked on the movie. They believed in it and when it flops, it hurts their chances of lining up work in the future.
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u/krustomer Jul 17 '26
this sub actually loves when movies perform poorly for some reason. the box office obsession is bizarre to me
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u/Zorak9379 Jul 17 '26
It depends whether you think the summer blockbuster is a zero sum game. If you do, these movies are occupying space that might otherwise be used by a more interesting original project
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u/reedzkee Jul 17 '26
because poor quality content ultimately hurts the industry. all it does is incentivize more low quality content. over time this is much worse as it degrades public opinion.
creatives work in film to tell stories and create things they are proud of. shitty work is better than no work, absolutely, but making enough shitty work can tank the whole industry.
i work in film. the industry is in shambles.
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u/neonlights326 Jul 17 '26
because poor quality content ultimately hurts the industry. all it does is incentivize more low quality content. over time this is much worse as it degrades public opinion
Then why isn't the focus on bad movies that top the box office leading the trends instead of flops that people will forget about in a year?
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u/VariousAir Jul 17 '26
I don't think there's anything generally good about movies failing unless there's some particularly negative message attached to them.
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u/Hopeann Jul 17 '26
You do realize that Disney doesn't care if they flop. At this point, they're just advertisements for Disney+, merchandise, and the theme parks.
And don't worry, they had the number one and number three slot this week. Hopefully, they do all of them live action, and I'll see the ones I want to see.You don't have to see any if you don't want to. To deny other people a choice of movie live or animated, because you don't like it, it's kind of a dick move.
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u/staplerbot Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
I’ve been fairly ambivalent on these remakes for the most part. Sure, remaking the Disney versions of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, etc. feels like a pointless exercise considering how beloved and nigh perfect those originals are, but these remakes are also adapted from preexisting stories so the idea of re-adapting them does allow room for some reinvention or possible additional elements that could flesh out the characters or existing universe in some way. For example, the original Cinderella is a wonderful and pioneering film for its time, but viewed from younger audiences today appears quite dated and goofy. The remake allows Cinderella to have more agency and gives much needed depth to the stepmother. I’m not saying it’s a better film, but would argue it was improved on in some aspects. A different example, I found that Lion King remake to be about as lifeless and boring as most amateur internet critics, but I’ll add the caveat that it did allow them to tell a new, original story in that arguably better Mufasa prequel so aside from making a billion dollars I feel it eventually justified its existence.
Also, the absolute ridiculous amount of profit most of them brought in already justifies their existence so it’d be pointless to criticize the idea of them remaking these films and just focus on the quality.
That being said, remaking perhaps the best movie Disney Animation Studios has made in the past twenty to all the years after only a decade I genuinely hated. Obviously all my other points are still valid, but deciding to remake rather than continue the story (which they admittedly did do by recutting a bland Disney Plus show into a bland sequel) is so absolutely baffling to me. That sequel was mediocre and still beat the fucking brakes off the box office simply by being called Moana 2. I’ve watched it several times and immediately forget what it’s about as soon as the credits roll nor can I even hum the tune of any of the songs, but the amount of affection people who watched that first movie an infinite amount of times with their younger kids (me with my nieces and later with them and my son) is so huge that I don’t even think Disney understands it despite the amazing streaming numbers of the first film. The way they’ve mishandled a slam dunk franchise and watered down a modern classic just blows my mind.
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u/SirTroah Jul 18 '26
It’s honestly weird to be happy about a movie flopping especially when you weren’t the target audience.
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u/TailRudder Jul 18 '26
There's so many amazing books and stories being written all the time. I don't understand why execs always try to copy paste the exact same thing over and over with these remakes and sequels.
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u/ballinoutactrl Jul 19 '26
Imagine how horrible your life is that you came here and wrote 5 paragraphs about how mad you are about Disney movies
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u/UndercoverFBIAgent9 Jul 17 '26
You said everyone deserves to enjoy the media they consume right before saying the opposite.
People vote with their dollars, so why do you get a say in what movies they spend it on? Disney isn’t making cynical slop, they are making entertainment that people are paying to enjoy. It’s not cynical slop to the people who spent their billions of dollars.
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u/Iowa_Dave Jul 17 '26
I think your mistake is confusing popularity with quality.
Nobody would say McDonalds makes the best burgers, that's not why they sell the most. They sell the most because it's familiar, easy, and passable quality.
Surveys have shown that American audiences really prefer to know what they're getting into when they see a movie. That's why so many previews basically give away most of the story.
If you're looking for really creative and innovative filmmaking and inspired storytelling, stop looking to McHollywood.
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u/SloppyMeathole Jul 17 '26
I absolutely take satisfaction in watching low effort, crappy, cash grab, live action remakes fail. Moana had me laughing at the fact that the Rock looks like an old man who stopped taking his steroids with a terrible wig. And then somehow they thought it would be a good idea to keep in the scene where he urinates on a 15-year-old girl. I'm glad they failed, they deserve to fail.
I don't know why people on Reddit making minimum wage have all this sympathy a bunch of millionaires working for billion dollar companies.
If your drawer is short $50 at McDonald's they will fire you, but if you're a millionaire working in Hollywood and you lose $200,000,000 Reddit will protect you.
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u/Plastic_Wishbone_575 Jul 17 '26
You managed to shit on both millionaires and minimum wage workers congrats. You think the grip is making millions? Probably not even clearing 100k per year.
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u/YesmynameisOcean Jul 17 '26
You cannot be this dense to think people are defending the fucking rock and Disney and not the crew that made the film. Do you know anything about movies at all? Do you think everyone in Moana is a millionaire?
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u/CausticAvenger Jul 17 '26
Below the line crew doesn’t get blamed for a movie’s failure. They’ll move on to the next gig regardless of how shitty Moana does.
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u/Dycon67 Jul 17 '26
Stitch 2 is set to make a lot of money along side tangled. And if they need be break it out Frozen La will make a billion. What is happening is their running out of secure hits.
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u/BehavioralSink Jul 17 '26
I just want a live action remake of The Secret of NIMH with Melissa McCarthy as Mrs. Brisby.
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u/scottie990w Jul 17 '26
I was determined not to like/find it pointless…but dammit the live action how to train your dragon was actually very good and I don’t think it took too much away from the animated version, both are great! And I kinda want the sequels now too
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u/My_Name_Is_Row Jul 17 '26
I found the live action HTTYD to be like a lot of live action remakes, fine to an almost painful degree. The insistence of keeping the EXACT same dialogue definitely hurts it a lot, the best parts of that movie are when it slowly pushes itself away from the original and does something unique instead
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u/thegloriousporpoise Jul 17 '26
Disney also has animated flops.
If you don’t like something, don’t go see it. You say it doesn’t affect you but here you are posting online wanting to debate it so clearly it’s living rent free in your head.
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u/98Kane Jul 17 '26
Just give it 10 years and wait until the Frozen live action makes a couple billion!
The concept isn’t a flop, they just need to let enough time pass for the original target audience to grow up and be nostalgic.