Ragesh Dipu
Disney’s CEO Bob Iger has revealed the plans to reboot ‘Home Alone‘, ‘Night at the Museum‘, ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ and ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ for Disney+, the studio’s upcoming streaming service. Notably, these films are all properties of Fox, which Disney can now access after they acquired most of the Fox empire for a whopping $71.3 billion. Revealing Disney’s intentions, Iger said “We’re also focused on leveraging Fox’s vast library of great titles to further enrich the content mix on our [direct to consumer] platforms”. For those unaware, Disney has already been successful in reimagining many of its classic properties — like ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Aladdin’ — and is now looking to do the same with 20th Century Fox’s films and shows.
However, it remains unclear at this time whether the reboots are being planned as television shows or films. Fox’s ‘Night at the Museum’ series, which spanned for three films, brought in more than $540 million domestically, while the ‘Home Alone’ movies made more around $490 million, not adjusted for inflation. The ‘Wimpy Kid’ movies made $186.4 million, unadjusted. Thus, Disney+ has its work cut out if the platform wishes to perform better.
While there is no reason to doubt Disney’s caliber when it comes to reboots, it usually reserves the remade titles for a theatrical release. One only has to look at ‘Aladdin‘ starring Will Smith. The film premiered late in May and has made over $1 billion at the box office. ‘The Lion King‘ also has been another of Disney’s success stories when it comes to reimagining titles since the film has grossed over $1 billion after only three weekends in the theaters. All of this leads us to believe that Fox’s reimagined titles are likely to be planned as films. Moreover, Disney+ is also getting one of Disney’s classic animations, ‘The Lady and the Tramp’. The live-action reboot has Tessa Thompson voicing Lady and Justin Theroux voicing Tramp.
Iger also added that Alan Horn and Alan Bergman are in charge of redefining the efforts of Fox film to ensure that the “same standards and the same creative discipline” are in place. Fox is evidently being taken in a new direction by Disney and is going to have an “all-new development slate” of titles which are going to get a theatrical release. Iger said, “We see great long-term value in the broad collection of theatrical IP we acquired from Fox”.
Disney+ is slated to debut on November 12, and will have 300 hours of Fox content, available for watching, at the time of its launch. The streaming platform will charge $7 monthly, and by the end of the first year of launch, Disney+ is expected to have more than 7,500 episodes of TV and 400 movies.
