A Letter RE: Disney Remakes
February 8, 2010
Rich Ross, Chairman
Walt Disney Studios
500 S. Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521
Dear Mr. Ross,
Congratulations on recently being promoted to Chairman of the Studio! I have a few ideas I wanted to share with you, hope you don’t mind.
The first is the big rumor of the week – you probably saw it – from some obscure Austrailian website that Disney is going to remake 1989’s Honey I Shrunk the Kids. An odd choice, but I guess it’s possible. Look at Tim Burton and Disney’s Alice in Wonderland this weekend. Congratuations on that, by the way. People sure do like movies that they’ve seen before.
I honestly was hoping that Disney was getting away from the remakes, though. For a tear in the late 1990s it was all the rage – 1996 had the live-action 101 Dalmatians, 1997 saw Robin Williams’ Flubber, Christina Ricci’s That Darn Cat, Brendan Fraser’s George of the Jungle and Leslie Nielsen’s Mr. Magoo, 1998 had Mighty Joe Young and Lindsay Lohan’s Parent Trap, 1999 had My Favorite Martian, Tarzan and Matthew Broderick’s Inspector Gadget.
After a few years sans-remakes (I like to call them “The Years in Which Peter Schneider Tried to Bring Sanity to the Walt Disney Studios”) they were off like a photocopier machine making copies of old scripts again in 2003 – The Country Bears, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan, The Haunted Mansion and The Young Black Stallion.
It calmed down a bit after that shock – 2004 had Around the World in 80 Days, 2005 had Herbie: Fully Loaded again with the Lohan, 2006 saw The Shaggy Dog with Tim Allen, in 2007 nobody saw Underdog, and last year had Race to Witch Mountain with The Rock and A Christmas Carol.
What’s my point?
Am I trying to shame you guys into making an original movie by listing some of the worst films ever to grace the silver screen (yes, silver screen only – I left out remade-for-television movies, such as 1995’s Kirk Cameron gem The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes)?
Not really. And I’m sure you wouldn’t stop either, not when your predecessors thought we needed a live-action The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010), another foray into the Swiss Family Robinson (2012) or Zemeckis screwing with the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (2012).
But I know you’re not into it. Your into High School Musical and Camp Rock and Cadet Kelly stuff. I know.
But if you have to do these, why not Splash?
Why not remake the 1984 romantic comedy?
Of course, with a few changes.
The first thing we’d have to change is the name “Madison”. Remember when Daryl Hannah sees the “Madison Avenue” road sign and says her name is “Madison”? And Tom Hanks says, in his Hanksian way, “That’s not even a name!”
Well, it is now. In fact, it was the sixth most popular name for girls born in 2009.
So I think this time you go with something totally outlandish. What about Zalophus californianus? I can see “Zalophus” being a popular name in 2036 …
And there can’t be as much nudity as there was in the original, either. PG in 1984 is way different than PG in 2010. Remember when Daryl Hannah was walking up to the Statue of Liberty and you could see her entire naked rear-end? That’d be Rated X these days! You can’t do that!
And cut the swearing, too. I remember a few bad words that we can’t have in a Disney movie.
What if it was in San Francisico, instead of New York? Nobody wants to think of anything coming out of the polluted New York waterways anymore.
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