Though not the very first time Disney attempted to translate a Walt Disney Animation Studios title into live-action, 2010’s Alice in Wonderland started a modern cinematic trend that has no end in sight. As long as lucrative titles like 2016’s The Jungle Book and the two recent Lion King features exist, Disney will keep executing live-action and realistically animated updates of beloved Disney Animation features. The critical reviews for these motion pictures are rarely strong, but Disney treats them like an excuse to print money.
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Of course, no trend spanning 15+ years can be bulletproof at the box office. While all eyes are on Snow White to see if it can continue the box office success some of its spiritual predecessors enjoyed, it’s worth remembering the five times that Disney’s remake attempts went sideways. These motion pictures (one of which even predates Alice in Wonderland) show that it’s not all joyous and bubbly times when it comes to getting audiences excited for live-action Disney remakes.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
In 2010, Alice in Wonderland forever changed the trajectory of Disney’s live-action cinema ambitions with a gargantuan $1.025 billion worldwide gross. Flash forward six years later and a sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass, finally hit theaters to significantly more subdued box office numbers. In its entire domestic run, Looking Glass only grossed $77.04 million, less than Alice in Wonderland’s North American opening weekend. Worldwide, Looking Glass grossed an anemic $299.45 million on a $170 million budget. Any buzz Wonderland generated vanished by the time Looking Glass hit multiplexes. Add all the controversy and diminished star power of Johnny Depp after Wonderland, and it’s no wonder Alice Through the Looking Glass cratered back in 2016.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, an adaptation of a beloved Fantasia segment, did not exactly produce box office numbers that were music to the ears of Disney executives. Its worldwide gross only reached $215.28 million despite a hefty $150 million price tag. Though Apprentice (with leading man Nicolas Cage and director Jon Turteltaub) tried to financially recreate the success of National Treasure, audiences just weren’t interested in a family-friendly tale of dueling wizards set beyond the borders of Hogwarts. Competition from summer 2010 family fare like Despicable Me and Toy Story 3 also didn’t help.
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Dumbo
If Disney remakes an animated title from before 1960, the box office results will inevitably be way smaller. Redos of famous ’90s animated features like Aladdin and The Lion King have had significantly better figures than updates of more vintage Disney titles. That’s no problem when something like Cinderella has a restrained budget; however, 2019’s Dumbo had a $170 million price tag it could never hope to recoup. Worldwide, Dumbo only grossed $353.28 million, a tremendous disappointment given its behind-the-scenes creative pedigree and lengthy marketing campaign. No wonder that Pinocchio remake later went to Disney+.
102 Dalmatians
Live-action Disney remakes tend to be one-and-done affairs for audiences. Folks will show up in droves to Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent but aren’t very interested in sequels to those updates; clearly, it’s hard to maintain the novelty of seeing animated characters in the “real world” for more than one movie. That was even true a decade before Alice in Wonderland when 1996’s sleeper hit 101 Dalmatians inspired the Thanksgiving 2000 sequel 102 Dalmatians. This sequel made less than half of its predecessor’s domestic cume and could only muster $183.6 million worldwide. Those pooches and Glenn Close’s Cruella weren’t enough to inspire a new live-action franchise.
Mulan
Once set to be a late March 2020 tentpole, Mulan eventually opened in North America and most global territories over Labor Day weekend 2020 as a premium-video-on-demand title through the Disney+ Premium Access program during COVID. Internationally, the feature played theatrically in a handful of countries, including China, where it grossed a collective $69.9 million. No official figures have been released for its PVOD revenue, but on the high end, it’s estimated to have grossed as much as only $93 million in PVOD rentals. The combined $163 million haul of those two figures was nowhere near enough to cover Mulan’s $200 million budget. Understandably, beyond Cruella in May 2021 (which at least went to theaters in every country, including the U.S.), Disney has never implemented Mulan’s miscalculated release strategy for any other costly Mouse House remake.
Mulan is now streaming on Disney+.
