With the wild success of Disney’s “golden age” animated films, it’s no surprise that the company is trying to reestablish the glory of its earliest movies.
But, Disney’s tendency to resort to their classics rather than create new content comes across as lazy and uninspired.
An excellent example is the original “Snow White” movie. It was groundbreaking, not only for the Walt Disney Company, but for the future of the film industry as a whole. With a runtime of one hour and 23 minutes, “Snow White” was the first full-length animated feature film in cinematic history. It grossed $8 million (equivalent to approximately $180 million today) upon initial release, immediately establishing Disney as a major studio.
The 2025 live-action remake did not fare anywhere near as well. With a $250 million production budget and a total global gross of $205.5 million, Disney suffered a major financial blow.
“Snow White” isn’t the first classic to be butchered by the new generation of Disney creators.
The first in a fifteen year-long string of remakes, Disney struck gold with “Alice in Wonderland” (2010). At a time when it was exceedingly rare for films to meet the $1 billion mark, Tim Burton’s film more than quintupled its budget, ending its theatre run with a worldwide gross of $1.02 billion. Naturally, Disney attempted to keep the momentum, releasing remake after remake of its classics.
Award-winning creative producer and University of Miami motion pictures professor Rechna Varma suggested that shareholder value is Disney’s main motivator.
“[These films are] low risk and highly profitable,” said Varma. “They figured out how to leverage nostalgia and brand recognition.”
Varma went on to explain that remake culture isn’t new — she just wishes Disney would reimagine rather than replicate.
“The film ‘A Star is Born’ has been remade four times and all were nominated for Oscars,” said Varma. “What we haven’t seen before is Disney’s systematic approach of adapting their whole animated catalogue. Their goal is more about brand extension than creative reinterpretation.”
But with the vast multimedia expenditures Disney has undergone in the past century, there’s plenty of other ways to capitalize on their classics without compromising the originality. They have their theme parks, channel’s reruns and a prideful team of innovators that are more than ready to invent rather than merely reinvent.
Disney is a cinematic giant, so there is no doubt that other companies will follow suit in capitalizing on their early successes rather than strive for new ones. Other competitors are following suit with Warner Brothers’ new “Harry Potter” series and Dreamworks’ “How to Train Your Dragon” (2025).
Certainly, some of the remakes are better than others, and in most cases the ones that did best are the ones that brought something new to a beloved film. “Maleficent” (2014) and “Cruella” (2021), for example, played to the strength of their predecessors while offering insight to the villains longtime fans love to hate. They told completely new stories while paying homage to the classics which inspired them.
The focus should be on creating rather than recreating and moving forward rather than erasing the footsteps that led us here. Audiences should demand creativity, particularly from a company that emphasizes the magic of imagination.