There’s been a huge fad lately in remaking animated movies as live-action films. Disney started doing this in 1994 with its live-action remake of The Jungle Book, and has been churning them out at a rate of one every year since 2014. (In 2019 it released no fewer than five!) Now Universal Pictures has jumped on the bandwagon, with a live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon due out in a few months.
Has the process ever gone the other way, though—remaking an entire live-action feature film as a cartoon? To be clear, I am not talking about spinoff or sequel movies or TV shows, where someone takes a live-action movie and then produces an animated show that retains the characters or settings with a new plot. I’m also not talking about any animated film that has the same characters and plot of a previous live-action films solely on account of both films having been based on the same source material, such as a novel or play. And I’m definitely not talking about individual scenes from a movie that have been redone in animation, for the purposes of parody or homage, within a wider TV show or movie.
Perhaps the only candidate I’m aware of that might fit is Simon Jansen’s rendering of the 1977 Star Wars as an ASCII animation. I’m not sure how complete it is, but the parts I’ve seen do seem to faithfully reproduce the original film. Of course, Simon’s animation was released only informally on the Internet, and not in cinemas.
Have there been any Hollywood remakes of this type?
I’m guessing you’re not asking for examples where Disney did an animated version of a public domain story, like Alice in Wonderland, that some other studio had previously done a live action version of?
Jon Favreau’s Elf was essentially remade as an animated TV special called Buddy’s Musical Christmas.
I recall before Prince Of Egypt came out it was often described as a remake of The Ten Commandments, but I don’t think you can really say that was what it was.
Looking at the plot, that particular film looks more like a separate adaptation of the original stories rather than a remake of the (musical) animated movie.
Before you say that the various Ben-Hur films are all based on the same novel, note that the animation stars Charlton Heston, reprising his role from the 1958 version. I think that qualifies as a remake, rather than an adaptation of the same source.
Definitely not an animated remake of the film. Both of them were “Wouldn’t these stories be better if needless characters were added for the purpose of cheap merchandising?”
I beg to differ. They used the script of the film, rather than make a new version of the book. At least WW&TCF did. They also copied the appearance of Charlie, the Oompa-Loompas and the everlasting gobstoppers. They used things that happened in the film, that weren’t in the original book. How is it not a remake when they used the same script? I agree that adding T&J was needless.
There was an anime version of A Wizard of Earthsea which came after the (awful) TV version, but that is disqualified as it it is two versions based on the same source (a book)
Some googling found this discussion, but many examples do not fit the OPs requirements
(Animated Robin Hood came after live action, but again, based on the same IP)
I’m not sure this really counts, but the 2018 remake of The Grinch is definitely a remake, not purely a fresh adaptation of the source story, because it contains versions of the same music that is in the previous movies, but is not in the source story.
It is arguable, however, whether the 2018 remake is remaking the 2000 live-action remake of the 1966 animated film, or if it is a direct remake of that, ignoring the 2000 live action film.
There was an animated version of the musical The King and I. It uses the same songs, and is arguably really an animated version of the stage musical, rather than the movie based on the stage musical. But I figure this is close enough. I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know if it uses some feature of the 1956 film that would stamp it as an adaptation of the movie.
Given the multiple lost episodes of the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton Doctor Who eras, animated recreations of the episodes based on stills and scripts have been made.
Star Wars Uncut is a partial example. A complete recreation of A New Hope in 15-second segments. Many of those were animated, computer graphics, stop motion, cardboard cutout, etc. Not sure of the proportion vs. live action, but it seems like it’s somewhere around 50%.
In 1971 there was an animated short film of A Christmas Carol. I’m not sure it would count as a literal remake, but Alistair Sim and Michael Hordem reprised their roles as Scrooge and Marley from the 1951 film.