Why Don’t Live-Action Disney Remake Sequels Make Money?

It’s staggering to consider how lucrative the live-action Disney remakes (plus the fully animated 2019 Lion King update) have been. Starting with Alice in Wonderland in March 2010, nine of these movies have cracked $200+ million domestically. Several of these titles, including Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Alice, have cracked $1+ billion worldwide. Beast still stands as the biggest live-action musical movie ever, domestically, not to mention the only live-action musical to ever exceed $500+ million in North America.

Save for the occasional Dumbo, these live-action/realistically animated remakes are equivalent to just printing money for Disney executives. A weird wrinkle to this phenomenon, though, is any time Disney tries to wring sequels out of these remakes. Before Mufasa: The Lion King hits theaters, it’s worth remembering that the previous times Disney’s made sequels to live-action remakes of their animated films, they’ve bombed. Badly. No amount of box office records shattered can get people interested in these titles long-term.

Why Did Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Alice Through the Looking Glass Bomb?

Moviegoers’ disinterest in seeing sequels to live-action Disney remakes was apparent long before Alice in Wonderland hit theaters in March 2010. In November 1996, Disney scored a massive hit with 101 Dalmatians. This Glenn Close-starring vehicle scored over $136 million domestically, making the eyes of Disney executives dance with the idea of turning this into a lengthy franchise. Four years later, 102 Dalmatians debuted over Thanksgiving 2000 weekend. However, the Jim Carrey Grinch movie was the go-to family movie blockbuster over that holiday frame while enthusiasm for 1996’s Dalmatians dwindled over the preceding years. 102 Dalmatians bombed with just $66.9 million domestically, a drop of more than 50% from its predecessor.

This established a firm precedent for these remakes: the novelty of seeing realistic versions of classic Disney characters could only last one movie. That was clearly an enticing prospect for audiences, but only once. After that, people had their fill and weren’t craving more live-action spotted doggies. Still, Disney pursued Alice Through the Looking Glass anyway in the 2010s as a way to build off Alice in Wonderland’s $1-billion worldwide haul. The result was a box office catastrophe that made less in its lifetime North American run than its predecessor did in its opening weekend.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil fared a bit better in its October 2019 theatrical run, but not by much. At least it got past $100+ million domestically, but it still made less than half of the first Maleficent domestically. These two follow-ups suffered from the excessive downtime between installments that also plagued 102 Dalmatians. Waiting nearly six years between Alice and Maleficent adventures made people realize they could get along fine without more extensions of these franchises. To boot, these sequels couldn’t quite mine nostalgia like their predecessors could.

[RELATED: The Disney Movies That Bombed Over Thanksgiving]

After all, there were no proper sequels to Sleeping Beauty or Alice in Wonderland in the original Disney Animation canon. 2019’s Aladdin, for instance, could stir up audience emotions by playing up songs like “A Whole New World” or “Friend Like Me.” Mistress of Evil and Through the Looking Glass had no such nostalgia to exploit. They were instead solely building potential box office success on top of the reputations of the original remakes. Given how divisive something like Alice in Wonderland turned out to be in its long-term pop culture legacy, that wasn’t a wise move. Thus, these titles got left behind at the box office, just like 102 Dalmations at the dawn of the new millennium.

Don’t Expect a Deluge of Further Disney Remake Sequels

Disney didn’t learn the lessons of 102 Dalmations before green-lighting Alice Through the Looking Glass. However, these modern Disney remake sequels seem to have impacted the Mouse House given the lack of further similar titles. While director Guy Ritchie has vaguely talked about an Aladdin sequel in recent years, there’s been no concrete momentum on the project nearly six years after it hit theaters. A proposed Jungle Book sequel has languished in development Hell for nearly a decade. Beauty and the Beast has absolutely no sequel on the horizon.

Mufasa: The Lion King is an exception to this rule, seemingly because its predecessor simply made too much money to ignore exploiting it further. Beyond that follow-up, the significantly more erratic box office track record of Disney live-action remakes in the 2020s ensured there are no whispers of sequels to those projects. Mulan and Peter Pan & Wendy have no chance of spawning further installments. Cruella 2 was once bandied about, but Emma Stone’s dance card is so full for the foreseeable future that such a production looks impossible for the time being.

For now, the box office sins of Mistress of Evil and Through the Looking Glass are unlikely to be repeated in the near future. However, these sequels still paint an ominous picture of the long-term pop culture impact of these Disney remakes. Something like Inside Out can wait nine years to produce a sequel and it turns into a box office phenomenon. Meanwhile, Maleficent and Alice in Wonderland were clearly only flash-in-the-pan box office hits that didn’t develop long-term fanbases or loyalty.

Perhaps that’s enough for Disney executives given how much these titles make in their initial theatrical runs. Few movies exceed $900+ million worldwide, after all. Still, the poor track record of remake sequels does encapsulate how these live-action/realistically animated updates can never hold a candle to the original animated features. Only time will tell if Mufasa: The Lion King can forego this box office phenomenon plaguing all previous extensions of Disney remakes.