During a recent interview with several studio executives, Sony Chairman Tom Rothman called out Disney's strategy of remaking their classic animated films in live-action. Beginning with Alice in Wonderland, the Mouse House has spent much of the last nine years releasing live-action and CGI (or, in one case, fully CGI) remakes of its cherished 2D animated titles Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. And though they haven't all been runaway success stories (sorry once again, Dumbo), the vast majority of them were very profitable.
Naturally, the studio has come under scrutiny for merely rehashing its most beloved stories on the big screen of late, and doing little more to" re-imagine" them than reshooting in live-action/CGI and "fixing" the parts of the animated movies that haven't aged so well (or were, frankly, problematic to begin with). It's also been pointed that, sooner or later, Disney will run out of classics to remake and will have to get back to focusing on original material instead. Even their biggest competitors are making a point about that now.
Rothman made his comment about Disney's live-action remakes during THR's recent Executive Roundtable with the heads of seven major studios, pointing out the importance of making worthwhile original films “Because even Disney will run out of animated movies to remake". In response to a separate question earlier in the discussion, Disney CCO Alan Horn actually agreed with the point, noting that Disney's animated movies are a "finite universe", and the studio is already starting to move away from straightforward remakes.
Like all major studios, though, Sony isn't above revisiting their most popular IPs either. The studio has already released new installments in franchises like Men in Black and Zombieland this year alone, and still has Elizabeth Banks' Charlie's Angels to come in November, followed by Jumanji: The Next Level in December and both The Grudge and Bad Boys for Life next January. Here, of course, the difference is that all of these films are either conventional sequels or partial reboots that take place in the same continuity as their predecessors, but focus on new characters and stories.
Disney, as Horn mentioned, has begun to move towards a similar approach with its live-action film division in recent years. Unlike its previous live-action remakes, for example, the upcoming Cruella is actually a live-action prequel about a young Cruella de Vil (Emma Stone) rather than another remake of its animated 101 Dalmatians movie. The studio is also coming off this month's Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, a sequel to its live-action Sleeping Beauty retelling which, itself, explored Maleficent's backstory and painted the sorceress as a much more complex and tragic figure. That said, the Mouse House still has a whole lot of clear-cut remakes in the pipeline, so it may be awhile now before they get back to being really "original" again.
Source: THR