Disney’s Most Exciting Live-Action Remake Was Just Officially Confirmed

Disney’s latest live-action remake has officially been confirmed to be in production. That would be a remake of the 2019 animated film Tangled, a modern flip on the classic fairy tale of Rapunzel and her long hair, which is now considered one of Disney’s modern classic ‘princess’ movies, alongside Frozen and Encanto. Confirmation on the live-action remake of Tangled came from a fan-favorite source: Kathryn Hahn (Marvel’s Agatha All Along), who has been cast as Tangled villain Mother Gothel, the manipulative figure who wants to keep Rapunzel in the tower, to leech youth-giving magic from her mystical hair.

The Tangled remake is already in production with Michael Gracey (Hugh Jackman’s The Greatest Showman) in the director’s chair. The confirmed cast includes Teagan Croft (DC’s Titans) as Rapunzel, with Milo Manheim (Zombie) playing Rapunzel’s love interest, Flynn. There’s no release date yet, but since the cast and crew are in place, it’s expected that it will arrive soon – possibly in 2027 or the first half of 2028.

Tangled‘s Live-Action Remake Hopes to Continue Disney’s Big Comeback

Disney opened a whole new lane of opportunity when it released Tim Burton’s live-action remake of Alice in Wonderland in 2010, which earned a billion dollars worldwide. While Disney had tried its hand at live-action adaptations in the late 1990s (Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and the 1996 remake of 101 Dalmatians), it wasn’t until the 2010s that the studio finally had a generation of viewers who weren’t so connected to the animated originals and were eager to see new versions of the classic stories.

At first, Disney tried live-action re-imaginings like Burton’s Wonderland, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010), an action-adventure twist on Disney’s Fantasia starring Nic Cage, Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent (a Wicked-style twist on Sleeping Beauty), or Kenneth Branagh’s classic romantic epic version of Cinderella (2015). However, when those new-age “re-imaginings” started yielding only modest returns on their massive production budgets ($100–$200 million each), a new approach was adopted.

By 2016, film technology had reached a point where Disney could ape James Cameron’s Avatar, using mixes of live actors and motion-capture performance (with photo-realistic CGI) that stretched the term “live-action” to the limit. The budgets swelled (often $200+ million), but so did the average on billion-dollar returns for films like The Jungle Book (2016), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Aladdin (2019), and The Lion King (2019). After that run, however, Disney’s live-action remake trend crashed and burned with films like Mulan (2020) and Pinocchio (2022), with some never even making it to theaters (Lady and the Tramp, 2019, was dumped onto Disney+).

It’s been no secret that Disney had a turbulent time in the early 2020s with the change in leadership from Bob Iger to his (failed) protegé, Bob Chapek. By 2023, Iger stepped back in and started to “right the ship,” which meant addressing the disastrous drop-off in the line of live-action remakes. It’s been a slow and steady climb back: The Little Mermaid (2023) earned nearly $600 million; The Lion King prequel, Mufasa (2024), earned over $720 million, while the Lilo & Stitch remake (2025) finally brought Disney back to the billion-dollar mark.

Tangled Is One of Many Live-Action Remakes Coming In Disney’s Next Wave

With that kind of trend, it’s no surprise that Disney has started to mine its biggest successes for the next wave of live-action remakes. Tangled is one of the biggest modern classics, for sure, but before it gets a live-action remake, another modern princess movie classic, Moana, will have its live-action remake hit theaters this year, with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson reprising his demigod role. A third Moana animated film is also in production.

Filmmaker Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes) will be taking on Hercules, his second Disney live-action remake after Aladdin. Also on the slate of upcoming live-action remakes is Bambi, a sequel to Lilo & Stitch, a spinoff of Beauty and the Beast (2017) centered around the arrogant ‘himbo’ villain, Gaston, and a sequel to Craig Gillespie’s prequel Cruella, which will act as a remake of Disney’s animated classic, 101 Dalmations.

The live-action remake of Tangled doesn’t have a release date, but is in production. Moana will be released in theaters on July 10th.

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