After a decade away from the big screen, Home Alone is finally returning in 2021 with Disney+’s upcoming release, Home Sweet Home Alone. Different rumors of new movies set in the beloved holiday franchise have circulated for years, and Disney’s soft reboot was formally announced in 2019. Scheduling changes and production delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic have pushed Home Sweet Home Alone out a bit further than initially expected, but finally, the new movie is almost here.
The first Home Alone premiered in theaters in 1990 and instantly became a smashing commercial success, grossing nearly $500 million worldwide on a budget of just $18 million. Though critics were more divided on the quality of the film, Home Alone quickly entered the pantheon of all-time great Christmas movies, where it has remained ever since. Four other films in the series have been released in the years since, but they’ve seen diminishing returns over time, which many fans have attributed to the absence of original stars Macaulay Culkin and Joe Pesci. Still, the fervor around the franchise has stayed high, with many fans holding out hope for another strong entry one day.
Thanks to Disney, those fans may finally be getting their Christmas wishes granted. Home Sweet Home Alone is just around the corner, and it could be the long-awaited return to form the series has needed for decades. Here’s everything that’s been revealed so far about Home Sweet Home Alone, when it will start streaming on Disney+, and what we know about the cast and story.
Disney+'s Home Alone Reboot Release Date
As a Christmas movie, Home Sweet Home Alone will be made available to Disney+ subscribers well ahead of the holidays on November 12, 2021. No theatrical release has been planned, as the film was developed as a streaming original for Disney+. That also means that, when Home Sweet Home Alone does release, it won’t cost the additional Premier Access fee that some of Disney’s bigger theatrical releases like Black Widow and Mulan have required. Anyone with a Disney+ account will be able to stream the new Home Alone at no extra charge.
For those with a strong nostalgia for the early films in the Home Alone franchise, the streaming-only release for Home Sweet Home Alone may be a bit disappointing. After all, the prior two movies, Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House (2002) and Home Alone: The Holiday Heist (2012) both released as made-for-TV movies and both wound up with abysmal reviews. So, does the reboot’s Disney+ release forebode another failure? Hopefully, that won’t be the case. By all accounts, Disney is treating Home Sweet Home Alone as a controversy-free release for Disney+, putting on a very different level than the last couple entries in the series. Plus, the cast and creative team for the new Home Alone is a great group with an impressive collective resume of past work.
Disney+'s Home Alone Reboot Cast
Home Sweet Home Alone will star Archie Yates as lead protagonist Max Mercer. Yates broke out in Hollywood in 2019 with his lauded performance as Yorki in Jojo Rabbit, and he seems like a perfect choice as the next besieged child of Home Alone. The rest of the cast is filled with veteran comedians, including Rob Delaney (Catastrophe, Deadpool 2), Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live, Kenan), Chris Parnell (30 Rock, Rick and Morty), Ellie Kemper (The Office, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Pete Holmes, Timothy Simons, Aisling Bea, Ally Maki, and Andy Daly. Home Sweet Home Alone is written by Streeter Seidell and SNL’s Mikey Day, who is also set to appear in the film.
In addition to all the newcomers, Disney’s Home Alone reboot will reportedly feature cameos from Macaulay Culkin, who played original protagonist Kevin McCallister in the first two movies, and Devin Ratray, who played Kevin’s older brother Buzz. The two actors will supposedly be playing their old characters all grown up, but it remains to be seen how exactly the McCallisters will fit into the story of the new movie. Regardless, it’s great to see both Culkin and Ratray getting some modern recognition for what they’ve given to the franchise, and bringing them back is an excellent move that bodes well for Home Sweet Home Alone.
Disney+'s Home Alone Reboot Story Details
Few details have been revealed for the plot of Disney’s Home Alone reboot, but the basic outline of the story has come out over time. Very similarly to the original film, Home Sweet Home Alone will follow a young boy – in the case, Yates’ Max Mercer – who’s left behind by his family over the holidays and subsequently must fend off some would-be burglars from robbing his house. It seems that the new movie won’t be changing the formula up to much, which is probably a good call given the series’ rocky recent past.
Still, Home Sweet Home Alone isn’t telling the exact same story as the original film. Disney has revealed that the villains of the new movie will actually be a married couple and that they infiltrate the Mercer home not just for a general robbery, but to steal a valuable family heirloom. It sounds like the Home Alone reboot will have plenty of opportunities for some thematic parallels between the Mercer’s and the intruding family, which could add an extra layer of narrative complexity to an otherwise familiar story.
Either way, Home Alone fans can expect the series most famous narrative trappings to return – Christmas carols, family drama, kids acting like adults, and of course, hordes of homemade traps and hazards to hinder and potentially maim the film’s villains. Home Alone is still best known for the myriad ways in which Kevin torments the thieves who show up on his doorstep, and Home Sweet Home Alone will surely feature a similar, equally painful montage of the bad guys getting exactly what they deserve. After so many past attempts at Home Alone reboots and sequels have fallen short of expectations, some may have given up on the franchise ever getting back to the heights it once occupied. With Disney committed to rebooting old franchises, there may yet be hope. But if Home Sweet Home Alone ends up being as fun and loyal to the source material as it seems, it could finally deliver another great entry in the beloved holiday franchise.