Disney officially announced that they are making yet another live action remake, but this time it’s Tangled. They have cast Milo Manheim as Flynn Rider and Australian star Teagan Croft as Rapunzel, while eyeing Kathryn Hann as Mother Gothel. But why make another live action when their others in the past have been box office failures?
The original Tangled movie came out in 2010 and became an iconic animated Disney princess movie that is based on the brothers Grimm story. But, Disney of course wanted a nice cash grab and decided this needed a live action adaptation. Wasting money on a live action movie doesn’t even put a dent into Disney’s pockets, because people will still go and see their movies and go to their theme parks any chance they get. While the first few live action remakes were decent and people would watch them, it started going downhill shortly after the live action Christopher Robin movie. Like with the most recent Snow White live action, which has a 39 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed 205.7 million dollars against their 240-270 million dollar budget. But then they started doing movies where the whole thing had to be CGI, like The Lion King, Dumbo, and Lady and The Tramp. Even the Mufasa movie that came out in 2024 would’ve been nice, but it was all live action when it could’ve been animated.
Disney producing live action remakes also causes the actors they hired for the roles to get constant harassment online. The biggest examples of this happening is Halle Bailey for The Little Mermaid and Rachel Zegler for Snow White. They received severe backlash because people didn’t like the fact that they weren’t a carbon copy of a mermaid and a girl that lived with seven dwarfs. But Disney themselves didn’t defend their actors because they just wanted money.
But even when Disney does make an original animated movie, people just don’t like it. They then try to make sequels that aren’t needed, like Toy Story that now has a fifth movie coming out in 2026. These sequels are almost always just cash grabs for the company.
Disney needs to slow down on their live actions and have the creative team sit in a room and come up with new story ideas. There are over 20 live action remakes that Disney made and it needs to stop. Original stories are what grabs the attention of the audience, something they haven’t seen before. They can’t keep doing the same old story over and over again in different formats.