Why is Disney revamping our childhood?
It seems to have all started with Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”. Since the release of this movie in 2010, Disney has run wild with the idea of live action remakes for some of its most classic movies.
Like most of the women (and maybe men too) who grew up watching the animated Disney princess movies, I was beyond thrilled when they announced new live action movies of some of my favorites like “Cinderella” and “Beauty & the Beast”. Recently there has even been gossip of another “Mulan”, “Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs” and “The Little Mermaid”. But the remakes don’t end with the princesses.
Remember “The Jungle Book”? They aren’t stopping there. Ten other live action classic Disney movies seem to be in the works, and hopefully they’re more than just rumors.
I didn’t really begin noticing the trend until this year when “Beauty & the Beast” was set to release and Instagram kept promoting ads for a new “The Lion King” movie. At some point it just hit me that most of my classic childhood movies were being redone, and the next generation wouldn’t really know the versions of these movies that I do.
But why is Disney revamping our childhood favorites? It seems that there is a “logic in safety” factor that many media companies use to turn a profit. According to Critical Media Studies, a textbook by Brian L. Ott and Robert L. Mack, “since exploiting proven formulas is driven by risk avoidance media companies are, in most circumstances, reluctant to produce highly original, innovative or creative content.” Simply put Disney knows that these movies are already successful and therefore banks on the idea that they can resell us the same content with a slight upgrade. And honestly, they’re right.
Its first weekend in theaters the new “Beauty & the Beast” film set box office records. The movie brought in $170 million, the most ever for a movie released in March. But it isn’t just “Beauty & the Beast” that made big bucks at the box office. Worldwide other live action remakes racked up their fair share of Disney’s profit: “Alice in Wonderland” made $1 billion, “Cinderella” finished at $543.5 million and “The Jungle Book” came in a little under a billion at $966.6 million.
Along with their obviously successful way of reselling us our childhood, Disney uses the same strategy when it comes to making sequels. The textbook says that there are two key principles in the logic of safety: “nothing succeeds like success” and “change is financially risky”. So if Disney makes a lot of profit on a new movie why wouldn’t they exploit the story line for as long as they can?
With this thinking Disney is also set to release sequels to some fan favorites in 2017. Keep an eye out for the next “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Thor”, both of which were successful comic books before hitting the big screen- but that’s a different conversation.
Just remember that these sequels and live action remakes are another way that Hollywood skimps on originality for a bigger paycheck. Not that that’ll stop me from seeing each and every one of them.
