Tangled development paused: Disney’s live-action remake problem is more than just Snow White

If you listen to some people in the entertainment media, Snow White’s box office takings collapsed because of the film’s star, Rachel Zegler.

That was certainly the argument from Jonah Platt, the son of Snow White producer Marc Platt, who publicly blamed Zegler for the film’s financial performance, accusing her of immaturity and narcissism.

It was also the narrative of a Variety article that read as if it was backgrounded by Disney insiders throwing its 23-year-old starlet under the bus by claiming her pro-Palestinian stance was the reason the reportedly $US270 million (before marketing costs) remake had a poor opening weekend and dreadful reviews.

After two weekends, it is now sitting at $US70 million in the US and Canada, and $US146 million worldwide. Given the 66 per cent drop from its first week to the second in the US, and losing the top spot to a Jason Statham action flick, A Working Man, it’s a dire sign of where the grosses will eventually end up.

It’s also a bad movie despite Zegler’s generally well-received performance in it. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Despite various parties’ attempt to cast Zegler as the villain in this story, there’s obviously more clearheaded thinking internally at Disney. Today, The Hollywood Reporter revealed Disney has pressed pause on an upcoming live-action remake project, Tangled.

Tangled was a 2010 CGI-animated retelling of the Rapunzel story, featuring the voice talent of Mandy Moore.

As part of Disney’s focus on remaking its animated classics into live-action or CGI-masquerading-as-live-action movies, Tangled has been in active development with Australian director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman, Better Man) and screenwriter Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge, upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel) already attached.

Ceasing production on Tangled suggests that Disney is more self-aware about what sunk Snow White than it would outwardly admit.

The controversies surrounding Zegler, who in addition to being an advocate for Palestinian statehood also dared to accurately point out the 1937 Snow White was problematic, may dominate discourse for the chronically online, but it’s not what concerns “regular” folks.

If you ask a random person face-to-face why they might not be interested in Snow White, odds are they’re not engaged in some Zegler boycott. Likely, they are barely if at all aware of the hoopla.

But what most them do say is “Oh, I’m so sick of Disney remakes, why can’t they do something new and original?”.

Very few people were asking for a Snow White remake in the same way that very few want another Tangled.

Since 2014, Disney’s release slate has been anchored around these live-action remakes, starting with Maleficent, which was actually pretty good because it had a different perspective, telling the story from a misunderstood villain as well as a deliciously vamp Angelina Jolie performance.

Every big Hollywood studio loves intellectual property (IP) it can exploit but Disney’s overall value is particularly dependent on brand extensions that start with the cinema screen and then expands out to everything including home entertainment, endless merchandise opportunities, Halloween costumes, and live experiences such as theme parks, Broadway shows and cruise ships.

It never starts and ends at the box office, so rolling out these remakes and keeping the brand and the characters constantly in the zeitgeist is about more than selling you a $25 movie ticket. It wants you to buy that $49.90 Little Mermaid backpack, the $200 Disneyland ticket, the $449 Beauty and the Beast Lego set, and the $4000 cruise package.

Some of the movies were even great (The Jungle Book, Pete’s Dragon) or at least half-decent (Cruella, Mufasa: The Lion King) while others were irredeemably awful (Aladdin, Pinocchio), but the overall story seems to be Disney kept going back to the same well.

For a spell, the well was full and at their pre-Covid peak, it didn’t matter if the movie was bad, it still made heaps of money — Aladdin (truly, truly horrible movie) did over $US1 billion while the highest-grossing was The Lion King at $US1.6 billion.

Audiences love nostalgia but they also want exciting new stories.

Snow White may be a cautionary tale that has spooked the higher ups from going ahead with Tangled, or maybe some other production issues caused it to be paused even before recent events, but the timing of the story is bad.

It also puts more pressure on the next two Disney live-action remakes on the way – Lilo & Stitch, due for release in May, and Moana, which finished filming last year.

Lilo & Stitch, based off the 2002 animation, is directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, who was Oscar-nominated for his beloved indie film Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, and features an admittedly adorable CGI Stitch, which the original film’s director Chris Sanders has returned to voice. Stitch merch is also everywhere and across everything.

It’s also a bright, manic, family-focused story with fewer landmines, requiring little if any “course corrections” given the original had only been released two decades earlier and holds up incredibly well. There were some re-casting headaches earlier on but it has gone largely under-the-radar.

Moana, since the original film’s release in 2016, is one of Disney’s most popular titles and the movie remains consistently one of its most watched movies on streaming. Audiences may well decide it’s too soon for a remake or they might enthusiastically embrace another version of a character they love deeply, and has been so culturally dominant for the past decade. Moana 2 made over $US1 billion.

But the other remakes still in the pipeline fall more into the Snow White basket than the Moana one, as older titles with which audiences have familiarity but not necessarily a deep connection – Robin Hood, The Aristocats and Bambi.

There’s also a Hercules remake in the works, and god help us, Guy Ritchie is attached to direct that because he did such a bang-up job with Aladdin. Eeeep.

Tangled might be benched, for now, but the strategy is not.