Disney to make "Re-imaginings" of Home Alone, Cheaper by the Dozen and Night at the Museum...

[AGXStarseed]

(Not written by me. I edited parts of this article to remove the swearing).

Home Alone REMAKE plans revealed by Disney - and fans are all saying the same thing

HOME ALONE is being remade by Disney for their new streaming service, it has been confirmed - and the news hasn’t gone down especially well.

The 1990 movie has been acquired by Disney in the Fox merger, and CEO Bob Iger allegedly revealed this week that he plans to “re-imagine” it and a host of other family films including Night At The Museum and Cheaper By The Dozen.

It’s not clear if the new editions will be films or TV projects, but they won’t be released theatrically.

Even so, the news has not gone down well at all with fans of the original on social media.

Pointing out a potential problem with setting a remake in the present day, one person joked: “The Home Alone remake is going to be a 1 minute short film. The parents realize they left their kid home alone and then call him on this cell phone and find out he is fine.”

Someone else said: “No I’m sorry, [censored] off with this now.”

“I. AM. RAGING.,” tweeted a another user, while an additional tweet reads:

“Dear @Disney, Please just [censored] don't. Sincerely, Everybody.”

“DO NOT TOUCH HOME ALONE! LEAVE HOME ALONE WELL ALONE THANK YOU,” said another tweet.

One enraged fan said: “you cant remake home alone!!!! its a proper classic. no one can be kevin mcallister ever again.”

Macaulay Culkin played Kevin McCallister, an eight-year-old who was accidentally left alone by his family when they went on holiday for Christmas.

Catherine O’Hara played his mother Kate, while John Heard was his father, Peter.

Whilst stuck on his own, Kevin faced a threat from two burglars - Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) - and set out a series of booby traps in a bid to thwart them.

The film made $477 million at the box office and a sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, followed in 1992 and took $359 million.

Attempts to recreate the magic have already been made several times: in 1997, Home Alone 3 was made a different cast and took just $80 million.

Two direct-to-TV sequels were made after that; Home Alone 4 in 2002 and Home Alone: The Holiday Heist in 2012.

Meanwhile, Night At The Museum was only released in 2006, while Cheaper By The Dozen - which starred Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt and was itself a remake of a 1950 film - came out in 2003.

Disney are also currently remaking a lot of their animated classics, with Dumbo, Aladdin and The Lion King released this year alone.


Source: an article titled Home Alone REMAKE plans revealed by Disney - and fans are all saying the same thing
Additional Source: Disney to remake Home Alone

 

[Tom]

Disney Recycling Company

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

Did all their people capable of original ideas die or something?

 

[AGXStarseed]

Did all their people capable of original ideas die or something?

To be fair, they are directing an adaptation of Artemis Fowl (a science fiction/fantasy series) with the film incorporating both the first and second books.
Also in 2020, Disney and Pixar are releasing two new original films - the first called "Onward" and the second called "Soul" - while Disney is also releasing a new movie based on one of their rides called "Jungle Cruise".

So Disney are not totally devoid of creating something new, but the amount of time they're spending making remakes, reboots and sequels is definitely too much.
Here's a list of upcoming Disney movies for the forseeable future - although this list also includes the Fox movies: Disney's movie schedule for 2019, 2020 and beyond

 

[Wolfnox]

Haven't seen disney do a movie right since Rogue One. Really not happy with them or Star Wars right now.

 

[tree]

The remakes remind me of the drama competitions in ancient Greece.
The playwrights didn't try to think up "new" plots, so much as they endeavored
to write the best version they could, using standard and much loved stories.

Theatre of ancient Greece - Wikipedia
Greek Theatre - Ancient Greece

 

[Judge]

Did all their people capable of original ideas die or something?

Apparently so. Probably back in the late 80s...

 

[FreeDiver]

Apparently so. Probably back in the late 80s...

I agree there. The 80's was the golden age for original content. I wonder if Star Wars had an effect on that, because the 70's was another one of those decades that was into remake stuff until Star Wars kinda helped break that spell in 1977.

 

[Peter Morrison]

If a good film comes out and it is a real hit, it becomes one in a long list of classic films that shouldn't be altered for any reason. Keep the original. The story is hard to believe anyway, but that's Hollywood. It's a good family film. Digital enhancement is fine as long as the story and scenes aren't disturbed. Modernizing it in any way would destroy it completely.

If they want to create a similar story, why not create a situation where the kid gets lost in a foreign country. After the mishaps that cause confusion and worry, the kid ends up exploring a new exotic place and is eventually found (by accident) and he has a beautiful story to tell about all the wonderful people who tried to help him and all the wonderful new experiences he had. Naturally, there must also be villains. That's where the adventure and intrigue lies. The kid doesn't have to be a boy either. Just imagine all the possibilities. Filmed on location, of course.

 

[AGXStarseed]

If they want to create a similar story, why not create a situation where the kid gets lost in a foreign country. After the mishaps that cause confusion and worry, the kid ends up exploring a new exotic place and is eventually found (by accident) and he has a beautiful story to tell about all the wonderful people who tried to help him and all the wonderful new experiences he had. Naturally, there must also be villains. That's where the adventure and intrigue lies. The kid doesn't have to be a boy either. Just imagine all the possibilities. Filmed on location, of course.

I quite like that idea. Depending on whether you want the story to be fully grounded or not, you could potentially take it further by working in a country's mythology or something like that - with it not been clear whether the kid is actually with those creatures or is hallucinating it all.
An example may be a kid getting lost in the Shetlands and been found by the Wulver - The "Scottish Werewolf" - who tries to guide him home while keeping him safe from various threats and encountering other creatures of folklore both benevolent and malevolent along the way, such as fairies, selkies and kelpies.

 

[AGXStarseed]

To quote Doug Walker, there's usually three reasons to make a remake and four reasons not to. Here are those reasons:

Reasons FOR a Remake:
1. Make a remake of a movie if it can be done better. Good examples of this include A Fistful of Dollars, True Lies and Scarface - all of which are remakes that did so much better that a lot of people don't realize they're remakes. Heck, I'm certain there's plenty of bad films with promising ideas that could easily be remade into good or even great movies.

2. Make a remake of a movie if there's concepts you can expand on. This involves you taking an idea from the original and expanding on it more. A good example would be Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which took the idea of Apes taking over Earth but instead focused on how it happened. Another ape-related example would be King Kong, which has been remade dozens of times in different ways - with the 2005 version giving more time for the relationship between Kong and Ann to develop and the 2017 version sticking strictly to Skull Island with Kong not only surviving but also been set up as a smaller part in a larger universe, set to culminate in 2020 with King Kong fighting Godzilla.

3. Make a remake of a movie if you can create a new experience. This involves you taking a story and looking at it differently, whether it's moving to a new time period, a new culture, new style or the story been told from an alternate point of view. An example here would be the Japanese film Seven Samurai, which was later remade into the film The Magnificent Seven but with the film moved from Japan to America and the Samurai replaced with cowboys. Other films such as The Departed, Birdcage and The Ring are also similar remakes of foreign horror movies that give a different point of view, while the remake of Little Shop of Horrors turned a B&W horror movie about a killer plant in a comical 80's musical (with the killer plant even singing) that was well received.

Reasons AGAINST a remake:
1. Don't make a remake of a movie if people can't separate it from the original. A big example here would be the 2016 Ghostbusters, as the original was so iconic and one-of-a-kind that trying to one-up it with a remake that the filmmakers say "this will be what you think of when you hear Ghostbusters" is damn near impossible.

2. Don't make a remake of a movie if you're just going to do the exact same thing. A lot of the Disney remakes have this problem very badly and it was made worse when the original animated films did the songs, lines and designs better than the live action films did. Another example was the remake of Psycho - which was literally a shot-by-shot remake with Vince Vaughn playing an inferior version of Norman Bates.

3. Don't make a remake of a movie if you're going to do less. Whether it's scaling down the original ideas and/or taking them out to be replaced with too much explanation, this can really ruin a film - with the remakes of The Wicker Man, Ben Hur, Nightmare on Elm Street and Alice In Wonderland all falling into this trap of doing less.

4. Don't make a remake of a movie if you're doing it strictly for profit and not because of a love of the original. This one is the one that Disney and Hollywood studios often forget and should remember. To quote Walt Disney himself, "I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things." (Too bad Hollywood doesn't seem to get the hint).
You may initially win people over with nostalgia but ultimately your movie will end up forgotten in the long run.

 

[Ken S.]

Best example of why you don't remake an original classic was in music when Metallica ruined Turn the Page.