Disney’s The Aristocats Getting Live-Action Remake From Questlove

Everybody wants to be a cat — and a remake. Disney has tapped Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson to direct the live-action re-imagining of The Aristocats, the studio’s latest animated film to get the remake treatment. The Grammy and Oscar-winning Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) documentary director will make his narrative feature debut behind the camera of the live-action Aristocats, based on the 1970 animated film that featured the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, and Scatman Crothers as jazz-loving cats. Deadline first reported the news.

Thompson, part of the jazzy hip hop band The Roots, will also serve as executive producer and oversee music for the film. Will Gluck (Peter Rabbit), who wrote the script with Keith Bunin (Pixar’s Onward), is executive producing for his Olive Bridge banner with Thompson’s Two One Five Entertainment; Thompson’s Roots co-founder Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter (Rise Up, Sing Out), Shawn Gee (James Brown: Say It Loud), and Zarah Zohlman (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) are executive producing for Two One Five.

The original 1970 movie produced by Walt Disney Productions was set in the heart of Paris and focused on high-society cat Duchess, who — along with kittens Toulouse, Marie, and Berlioz — is willed the entire fortune of eccentric millionairess Madame Adelaide. But when Adelaide’s bumbling butler Edgar Balthazar plots to pull off the ultimate catnap caper, it’s up to rough-and-tumble alley cat Thomas O’Malley and his band of swingin’ jazz cats to save the day.

The Aristocats joins a lineup of upcoming live-action Disney remakes that includes 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1989’s The Little Mermaid, 1997’s Hercules, and 2002’s Lilo & Stitch. The studio has had success at the box office mining its animated library for live-action redos: 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, 2019’s Aladdin, and 2019’s The Lion King all grossed over $1 billion globally.

Thompson, a six-time Grammy winner, took home his first Oscar for the documentary feature Summer of Soul, which was distributed by Disney-owned Hulu. According to Deadline, Thompson had “been weighing his options of what made sense when it came to directing a feature film,” ultimately landing on the animated musical remake. Disney’s live-action Aristocats does not yet have a release date.