Today, Disney is giving a proper Blu-ray release to the crown jewel in their animation empire, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The disc is loaded with amazing behind-the-scenes material, including deleted scenes and even an audio commentary featuring Walt Disney himself (in archived, non-zombie form)! People often forget that without Snow White, the modern animated feature itself might never have come to be, at least not in the way we know it now. With all the live-action remakes Walt Disney Studios is cranking out from their classic animation properties, it’s only a matter of time before they give this timeless Grimm Brothers fable a shot at real-world glory, although the lukewarm reception of two other recent Snow White films (Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman) may have soured them on the idea for now.
Nevertheless, the number of live-action remakes Disney has done or has planned in the last five-years is staggering: Alice in Wonderland, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Maleficent, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Pete’s Dragon, Beauty and the Beast, Cruella, Tink, Dumbo, Mulan, Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, Genies, Night on Bald Mountain, The Sword in the Stone and MORE. With all this going back to the well, it’s a wonder we haven’t drowned in remakes yet, but there are still quite a few unexploited titles within the Disney Vault, some of which are obscure and others that are recognizable by just about every kid on the planet.
We’re diving into that Vault to dig up some of Disney’s (so far) unexploited animated movies that could make for exceptional live-action remakes, all ten of which you can check out in the gallery below! Let us know which animated movies you think should become live-action films in the comments!
Be sure to click Full Screen to read each entry on a desktop.
10 Animated Movies Disney Should Do in Live-Action
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The Skeleton Dance (1929)
The Earth is round, the sky is blue and kids love to be scared. Those are three facts. As evidenced by the evergreen popularity of "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" and even Disney's own "The Nightmare Before Christmas," it's about time Disney embraced their legacy of fear. Making a live-action "Night on Bald Mountain" is a good start, but bringing to vivid life this iconic early Walt Disney/Ub Iwerks collaboration would be an ideal subject for a Tim Burton-y helmer to tackle. Watching a skeleton play another's spine like a xylophone is cool, as are the many follow-ups including "Haunted House" (1929) and "Egyptian Melodies" (1931).
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The Old Mill (1937)
Before getting into features, Disney was famous for a series of frequently funny, often surreal musical shorts called "Silly Symphonies," and 1937's "The Old Mill" was the most groundbreaking for the inaugural use of the multiplane camera (which allowed for picture depth) as well as realistic animation techniques. Even more than a testing ground for "Snow White," "The Old Mill" is a startling tone poem focusing on a menagerie of animals that live in a spooky abandoned windmill, barely escaping with their lives once a freak rainstorm hits. There is SO MUCH potential here for a live-action film utilizing realistic animals, telling a story with neither humans nor dialogue. If anyone could sustain such a story for 90 minutes it would be Disney.
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Mickey's Trailer (1938)
Oh Mickey Mouse, you underutilized-yet-ubiquitous corporate mascot. With the Walt Disney Company perverting American copyright laws in order to keep Mickey out of the public domain, the least they could do is give us a proper feature film starring the rodent scamp. While there have been a few direct-to-DVD features, Mickey has never had a full-length to call his own, so turning him from a 2D to CGI character couldn't be much of a leap. What would be truly cool would be a movie where the real world looks just like ours but is populated entirely by cartoony animals, and this 1938 road trip short with Donald and Goofy providing backup would make a great basis for such a film.
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The Three Caballeros (1944)
Speaking of Donald Duck, this animated oddity would translate spectacularly to live-action. In the early 1940s the U.S. Government sent Walt Disney and his artists for a goodwill tour of South America, which resulted in two feature films based around Latino culture: "Saludos Amigos" and "Three Caballeros," the latter featuring Donald teaming up with cigar-smoking Brazilian parrot José Carioca and pistol-packing Mexican rooster Panchito Pistoles. Politically correct what what? Together they explore song, dance, history and mythology from south of the border, culminating in a musical segment where Donald seems to be literally high and hallucinating colors Timothy Leary never saw. This surreal kids concoction would make for truly edgy entertainment nowadays, and cater to Latinos who now make up nearly a quarter of the U.S. population.
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Lady and the Tramp (1955)
With a great deal of the 2016 election revolving around the disparity between the haves and have-nots, wouldn't this be the ideal time to dive back into this classic battle of the (canine) sexes? There's no question the Cocker Spaniels and mutts will have to be CGI to do all their singing, dancing and spaghetti eating, but to separate it from the average dog movie, it would be cool if the character designs remained slightly big-eyed and cartoony. And no, Justin Bieber can NOT voice the Tramp!!!
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The Rescuers (1977)
The first Disney animated film to have a sequel (1990's "The Rescuers Down Under"), "The Rescuers" was made during the fallow period after Walt's death when the studio was struggling to recapture their heyday. Margery Sharp wrote nine books in the "Rescuers" series, only two of which were principally used for this movie, so there's still a lot of source material left to exploit, including one book set in the arctic.
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The Black Cauldron (1985)
And while we're on the subject of untapped source material, only the first two books in Lloyd Alexander's "The Chronicles of Prydain" series of five fantasy novels were exploited for this 1985 bomb, one of the low-points of the company's legacy. A young Jeffrey Katzenberg took it upon himself to strip away much of the film's darker elements (including the undead "Cauldron Born" stone-cold murdering people), resulting in a neutered and at-times incoherent final product. Now that we're living in the post-Peter Jackson era, it's been proven that material like this is workable in live-action, and isn't the whole point of remakes to rework material that didn't work the first time?
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James and the Giant Peach (1996)
It would be fitting that a film whose live-action bookends were universally criticized (while earning praise for its majority stop-motion sequences) would get a 100% live-action rendition. Based on the classic children's book by Roald Dahl, Henry Selick did an honorable job with the animated portions, but it was clear budget restraints and inexperience directing live human beings on a set put a damper on things, not to mention the downright turgid Randy Newman songs forced on Selick by the studio. A non-musical, all-human/CGI hybrid would finally do justice to one of Dahl's most enduring works.
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Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Arguably one of the best animated films to come out of Disney in the last decade-plus, this was an utter deviation in style and humor, evolving so much from director Chris Sanders' personal technique that it scarcely looks like a Disney movie at all. Best of all, the tale of a Hawaiian girl who befriends a strange alien could make for a really fun E.T. on pixie sticks vibe when translated to the real world.
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Tales from Earthsea (2006)
Okay, so this is not TECHNICALLY a Disney movie but was released and partly-funded by Disney through its relationship with Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli. Unfortunately Miyazaki's son, a complete novice at directing animated features, was appointed as director against his father's wishes, and the resulting film not only bears little resemblance to Ursula K. Le Guin's revered six-book cycle, it also fails to capture the magic of most Ghibli movies. Perhaps the world of Earthsea would be better served in a live-action realm that gives more fidelity to the source material.
