With a budget estimated at US$200 million to $250m ($351m-$438.7m), the film is banking on spectacular special effects to draw in crowds at a time when animated sequels Toy Story 5 and Minions & Monsters are riding high at the box office.<\/p>\n
Nostalgia <\/p>\n
Remakes and franchises have become a cornerstone of modern Hollywood production, despite criticism that they are a sign of declining creativity and risk-taking by the industry\u2019s big beasts.<\/p>\n
Concepts and characters that are already familiar to viewers are seen as bankable profit-makers by under-pressure studios, while offering attractive merchandising, games and other spin-off possibilities.<\/p>\n
Disney\u2019s appetite for live-action remakes of its animated hits was whetted by the huge success of 2010\u2019s Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton, which grossed more than US$1 billion worldwide.<\/p>\n
Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and Lilo & Stitch have each broken the billion-dollar level at the box office since.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, they\u2019ve done very well, especially the films based on the Disney Renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s,\u201d Stephane Durand, a pop culture and Disney specialist in France, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest hits are films that recreate the original almost shot for shot,\u201d he explained. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor people interested in storytelling, it\u2019s pretty poor. But as long as the films make a billion dollars, it will go on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not all have been a hit, however.<\/p>\n
The Little Mermaid (2023) earned a lacklustre reception, while Snow White (2025) proved a disappointment.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudios need to ensure that the charm of the original is retained and need to be extremely judicious with their creative licence,\u201d Caroline Reid, a journalist at Forbes magazine specialised in the film and entertainment industries, said.<\/p>\n
But even those that don\u2019t draw crowds to cinemas can still turn out to be commercial hits thanks to the rise of streaming.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of the live-action remakes that don\u2019t succeed at the box office are hits on streaming. The Little Mermaid is a good example of this,\u201d Reid said.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a budget estimated at US$200 million to $250m ($351m-$438.7m), the film is banking on spectacular special effects…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6030,7269,1863,152474,10703,380,2398,242756,156,2082,115233,152489,41654,409,111,139,1536,69,9716,2847,255523,2887,4889,112368,150326,1361,255522,13020,686,1533,102],"class_list":["post-514032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-again","tag-animation","tag-back","tag-catalogue","tag-characters","tag-decade","tag-disney","tag-disneys","tag-entertainment","tag-for","tag-franchises","tag-liveaction","tag-moana","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-old","tag-only","tag-polynesianthemed","tag-release","tag-reliance","tag-remake","tag-taps","tag-that","tag-underlined","tag-version","tag-week","tag-will","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}