So yeah, with the release of the Frozen II trailer today…
It got my assistant and I thinking about how much Disney has on the slate in 2019.
Captain Marvel
Avengers: Endgame
Spider-Man Far From Home
Dumbo
Aladdin
The Lion King
Toy Story 4
Star Wars: Episode IX
Artemis Fowl
Frozen II
Hell, depending on the scheduling we could add Dark Phoenix and New Mutants under their banner. That’s some big tentpoles out there with 10 major releases.
… and not a single original property among them. 
Wow, outside of the Disney stuff listed above this summer looks pretty dismal for big summer releases. Godzilla and the Men in Black reboot?
Artemis Fowl, at least, isn’t a remake or a continuation of an ongoing series, though it is a book adaptation. (One could argue that Captain Marvel isn’t, either, unless you consider all of the MCU films to be one big series.)
Dropping THREE remakes of their own movies in a single year seems bonkers to me. They’ve had ONE mild success with that formula; I have to think they would be smarter to pace themselves.
I read an article that pointed out that Disney has never won the Best Picture Oscar, while discussing its takeover of Fox. Fox and its Fox Searchlight subsidiary, has made the kind of serious films that are in contention for awards. So I hope that Disney does release some grown-up movies in addition to these popcorn flicks.
I get where you’re coming from, and I don’t necessarily disagree. But they’ve really had more than one mild success with the formula.
Beauty and the Beast: $1.26B
Cinderella: $540M
Jungle Book: $966M
Pete’s Dragon: $143M
One tank in the batch. But they also seem to be counting:
Maleficient: $758M
Alice in Wonderland: $1.025B
Alice Through the Looking Glass: $299M
And discounting the 101 Dalmations things from the 90s completely.
That’s a lot of money. And they have Lady and the Tramp under development but delayed. It was originally slated for November but I think committing to Frozen II is the better play.
I want to see them come out with Spin and Marty: The Motion Picture…
Good points. I actually didn’t realize until now that Cinderella and Jungle Book were both straight live-action remakes of the cartoons; I thought they were new movies from the same source. The only one of the three “pure” remakes I’ve seen was Beauty & The Beast, which I found enjoyable but also fairly unnecessary.
Pete’s Dragon was very different from the original, and I would put more in the category with Maleficent and Alice – a new movie borrowing from an existing property. THOSE I understand, even if I would usually rather they start fresh.
The straight remakes just seem like a strange idea because you risk cannibalizing your original work, but, hey, who am I to argue with $1.26 billion in receipts?
Boy, if a billion dollars in profit on one movie is a mild success, sign me up for some mild successes.
I can, incidentally, tell you why “Pete’s Dragon” was the one disappointment; it was absolutely terrible.
Dumbo, Aladdin, and Lion King all coming out within a few months of each does seem like over-saturation. And there’s been a pretty good sized backlash to Aladdin so far.
More money! Less creativity! Ugh.
We need someone with the wealth and resources to step in there and break up the Disney/Hollywood cartel and introduce some serious new innovative filmmaking in there. Unfortunately nobody with the billions of bucks necessary has the mojo to do that.
It doesn’t require billions to compete and make successful movies in Hollywood today. Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions company have made a bunch of money, mostly but not entirely in horror films, with most of their films costing less than five million to produce. And it’s not all schlock. They’ve produced Split, Get Out and BlacKkKlansman.
Most originality (YMMV on what that really means) does better on streaming these days. The budgets for movies mean risk taking is best avoided, and testing waters with new ideas is a much safer prospect on non-Network TV.
im waiting for the elsa meets princess charming discussions to start adter it comes out
Going by that teaser, it would be more practical for her to meet up with Moana. (And why couldn’t they have named it Frozener?)
Frozen and Frozener
Hey, I got that even if nobody else did.
A24, my friend. That’s where the good original stuff is these days.
Ex Machina
The Lobster
The incredibly snubbed at the Oscars Eighth Grade
Under the Skin
Spring Breakers
Locke
Room
The Witch
Swiss Army Man
Moonlight
The Florida Project
Lady Bird
The Disaster Artist
Hereditary
And that’s just some. A24 is banking some real quality original movies these days.
2Frozen 2Furious
I do wish they had gone with a subtitle instead of a numeral, which I thought Hollywood had grown out of.