Trivia / Disney Live-Action Remakes

• California Doubling: Most of the live-action remakes have been shot in the U.K., where none of them take place unless you count Christopher Robin or Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland as part of the franchise. This includes Dumbo, making it a U.S. production that uses the U.K. to double for the U.S.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King have grossed over $1 billion each at the worldwide box office^*as did Alice in Wonderland, if you count it, and The Jungle Book ended up pretty close. Maleficent was big enough of a hit (over $750 million) to warrant a sequel. Even with the other films being modest-to-OK grossers and some releases going straight-to-streaming on Disney+ (and probably a lot more of them in the future due to the COVID-19 Pandemic), the trend shows no sign of stopping and has become a major film franchise in its own right for Disney alongside the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, the Animated Canon and Pixar.
• Disowned Adaptation: Dean DeBlois is not pleased with Disney's decision to remake their animated films, especially his and Chris Sanders's Lilo & Stitch (even though Sanders is reprising his iconic voice role for the adaptation), saying that it "suggests the animated version of it is lesser". He even stated that he knows that Disney can take risks, yet is bothered that they're choosing not to. Despite this statement, he's since moved on to be personally involved in the live-action adaptation of How to Train Your Dragon.
• Fake Nationality:
  • The predominantly British/American cast of Beauty and the Beast (2017), playing Frenchmen and women.
  • The half-European, half-Indian Naomi Scott portrays the Middle Eastern princess Jasmine in Aladdin (2019), although it's mitigated by the character's mother coming from an India-inspired country.
  • The whole American/Scottish cast of Maleficent, most notably Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning as Maleficent and Aurora, who are French, while giving them British accents.
  • The American Emma Stone as the British Estella Hellman/Cruella de Vil.
• Follow the Leader: DreamWorks and Universal are now working on adapting major animated film IPs of their own. Live-action How to Train Your Dragon is set for release in 2025.
• Role Reprise:
  • James Earl Jones reprised his role as the voice of Mufusa in the Lion King remake while Frank Welker reprised his roles as the voices of Abu, Rajah, and The Cave of Wonders in the Aladdin remake.
  • Lilo & Stitch creator, co-writer and co-director Chris Sanders will be reprising his iconic voice role as Stitch for the remake of his film.
• Self-Adaptation: The films are (mostly) live-action remakes of hit Disney animated films by Walt Disney Pictures.
• Sequel Gap: All franchises in the series are hit with this, due to how long it's been since the Disneytoon Studios days. The shortest gap is the seven years between Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams and Maleficent. If direct-to-video spin-offs don't count, then the shortest gap is the 22 years between the 1998 and 2020 versions of Mulan. The longest gap is the 82 years between the 1940 and 2022 versions of Pinocchio, which never had any direct-to-video spin-offs.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • In 2019, rumors that the line was going to include a remake of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, with Guillermo del Toro directing and Tom Holland starring, popped up on the internet. Despite the fact that the rumors were discredited (by del Toro himself, no less) and Disney has not said anything about it, many people still believe that it's going to happen.
  • Similar rumors of a Tangled remake started circulating the internet around 2020, even thought there's no evidence of such a remake being planned.

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