“That’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instil hope again and again and again.” -Walt Disney
Photo Credit: (flickr) KiJeon Nam
Since the creation of Mickey Mouse in the late 1920’s, Walt Disney and his studio have always had a huge impact in the movie industry. From ‘Snow White‘ which, who was the first ever Disney princess to grace the big screen to the more recent ‘Coco’ which was released in cinema’s just last year (2017).
Although Disney is renowned for it’s tales of magic and adventure, we cannot gloss over the fact that many of it’s upcoming movies are tagged with the words ‘Reboot’, ‘Remake’ and ‘Sequel. This begs the question, is Disney running short of original ideas?
Sometimes a movie deserves a sequel or to be made into a series, but with recent announcements it seems that the famous studio has grown a fondness of taking an animated classic and re shooting it as a live action. Yes, ‘The Jungle Book’ was most definitely a success and director Jon Favreau managed to create a brilliant movie without destroying the original; but managing this time again will be near impossible.
Every year Disney release a list of their upcoming movies for the next three years and this year is no different. From 2018-2019 the studio will release 14 movies that we know of so far- excluding Marvel or Star Wars. Out of these 14, five are sequels, three are live action remakes and the rest are either unknown or a book adaption. Not very original unfortunately. This begs the question why? What is going on in the creative department in Disney that is resulting in the lack or original screenplay ideas?
Is it possible that the likes of technology and social media are ruining the creative thinkers of the next generation of story writers, or maybe Disney are only having a moment by going back to their roots. Either way, this method of creating a movie is lazy and happening too often. They are becoming the norm in Hollywood as it is not just Disney who have been milking this recently. Movies such as ‘Fantastic Four‘, ‘Spider man‘ and ‘Ghost busters‘ are all examples of movie reboots released with the last few years.
Hopefully this is just a phase that is affecting the movie industry at the moment, a case of writers block. Only time will tell.
