Keep the change ya filthy animal: Disney scraping the bottom of the barrel with Home Alone remake?

Disney will remake ‘Home Alone’ for its new streaming service Disney+. Fans have taken to social media to beg the company to leave their beloved Christmas classic alone.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said Home Alone will be “reimagined” for “a new generation,” along with ‘Night at the Museum’, ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’, and ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’. One can only imagine him on a conference call with cartoon dollar signs flashing in his eyes. And fans young and old were having none of it. 

“There is no need to redo that film. It is pretty perfect,”wrote reporter Roger Clark. “Do not touch #HomeAlone. It is already a masterpiece,” another person tweeted.

In the 1990 classic, eight-year-old Kevin McAllister is left to fend for himself when his extended family jets off on vacation, leaving him behind. With phone lines cut off, Kevin rigs his home with booby traps to ward off a pair of hapless burglars until his parents return. Three decades later, some commenters pointed out, a modern-day Kevin McAllister could just whip out his smartphone and catch an uber to the airport, making for a short and uneventful movie.

And with 2019 being 2019, there’s also the risk that Disney might add a pinch of woke to the mix. A female Kevin McAllister beating on two cis male burglars while spouting girl power catchphases? A trans Kevin? Hollywood’s penchant for spicing up remakes with social justice has already drawn scorn and condemnation, but the movie industry shows no signs of stopping. All-female remakes of ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Ocean’s 11’ were panned by viewers, but a female ‘Thor’ and a potential female 007 are still in the pipeline.

Wokeness aside, remakes have become the bread and butter of a movie industry many say is out of ideas. No fewer than 115 reboots or remakes were in the works at the beginning of the year, and the top 10 box office hits of 2018 were all remakes, sequels, or based on old comic book characters.

Disney has taken to the practice with glee. Hot on the heels of ‘The Lion King’, ‘Aladdin’, and ‘Dumbo’, Disney is working on live-action remakes of ‘Lady and the Tramp’ and ‘Mulan’, with others rumored.

Still, Iger announced on Tuesday’s call that Disney’s studio entertainment division took in $3.8 billion in revenue last quarter, up 33 percent from the same period last year. As long as the firm can crank out enough mega-hits, the occasional remake flop is unlikely to dent its profits.

Evidently fixated on safe bets and easy profits, the question remains as to whether studios like Disney are sucking the creativity out of film.

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