... In Disney’s quest to turn every single one of its properties into an ouroboros of cartoon-sequel-live action remake-live action sequel-cartoon again, Aladdin is going to join Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella as a live-action movie. And they’ve somehow landed on Guy Ritchie as the director. ...
John August, entertainment journals report, has written the screenplay.
In my long-ago youth (we're talking the 1980s), people used to complain to me that Disney wasn't Disney anymore, and wasn't that a shame, wasn't that dispiriting (etc.) I used to think they were on to something, these people, grousing about how the company of Walt had become impure, and just wasn't, you know Disney anymore.
Now I think the complaints are poppycock. Walt went to his reward a half century ago. "Walt's dead and you missed it!*" Sweet little Walt Disney Productions is now the gargantuan Walt Disney Company, the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates, and it makes product to
1) increase profit margins and cash flow
2) strengthen the bottom line
3) expand and reinforce the brand.
Nobody can bring back the studio that existed in the era of Snow White ... or when Disneyland was built ... or the period when young Jeffrey Katzenberg breathed fresh life into feature animation a quarter century ago.
All that's over.
What's there now is a large, busy company that's out to maximize the potential of its Intellectual Property. Diz Co. has long-since stumbled onto the fact that remakes of its animated library make mountains of money, so quess what? The company is going to order up remakes of even marginal hits from its past.
If purists don't like that, they can go watch a Blu-Ray of So Dear To My Heart, and pine for the way things used to be.
* Ward Kimball gleefully telling art students that they weren't around for the glory days of the studio, and too fcking bad.
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