Tim Burton Is Finished With Disney After Bad Experience on Dumbo Remake

Tim Burton’s Dumbo was a modest success at the box office in 2019, but between being overshadowed by other, flashier “live-action remakes” of Disney’s animated classics, and a pandemic that has changed the face of the movie industry, it has been largely forgotten. Now, Burton is citing the experience as the reason he will probably never work for Disney again. Calling the movie “quite autobiographical at a certain level,” Burton called the studio a “horrible big circus” in a recent interview. He was also critical of Disney’s recent hard pivot toward Star Wars, Marvel, and other safe bets.

His critique is not the time-honored gripe that superhero movies aren’t good — after all, his Batman was instrumental in creating the superhero genre as we now know it. Instead, his complaint is that a never-ending line of brand-led movies makes Disney’s output generally a lot less interesting becuase it’s all so homogenous. 

“My history is that I started out there. I was hired and fired like several times throughout my career there,” he said. “The thing about Dumbo is that’s why I think my days with Disney are done: I realized that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus, and I needed to escape.”

After beginning his career with Disney as an animator, Burton has returned frequently, creating the films The Nightmare Before Christmas; James and the Giant Peach; Alice in Wonderland and its 2016 sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass; Frankenweenie; and finally, Dumbo. He is the rare filmmaker who is so influential that his name often overtakes the director’s, or even the movie’s itself, when he steps on as producer (as happened with The Nightmare Before Christmas).

He has also worked with Warner Bros. on movies like Beetlejuice and Batman; and with Sony on Big Fish, among others.

Burton’s Dumbo split critics, as many of his more recent movies have. His style has become so pronounced and specific that some critics argue it overwhelms the narrative and the whole movie becomes about being a Tim Burton movie. Most of Burton’s movies still connect with audiences, although it’s kind of an all-or-nothing situation when he takes on a piece of intellectual property that comes with its own set of expectations independent of Burton’s vision. As a result, movies like Dumbo and Dark Shadows haven’t fared especially well with critics or audiences.

The filmmaker has a new series coming up — Wednesday, set in the world of The Addams Family — and has teased fans for years with the possibility of returning to the world of Beetlejuice for a sequel more than 20 years after that film’s initial release.