Inspired by the recent success of the live-action version of “Cinderella” starring Lily James, Disney Pictures appears to be jumping on the bandwagon of remaking its classic animated films with live-version remakes.
Word has it that the company is now looking at doing a live-action remake of “Mulan,” the story of the Chinese female warrior legend Hua Mulan, cites Yahoo! News.
The animated film “Mulan” was shown in June 1998 and grossed over $300 million for Disney from a production budget of $90 million.
It was the 36th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, which was an 88-minute musical-action-comedy-drama film directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook based on the story of Robert D. San Souci and screenplay by Rita Hsiao.
Live-action remake binge
Since making the “Alice in Wonderland” live-action movie in 2010, which made a worldwide box office haul of $1 billion, Disney got surprisingly slow to capitalize on the success of the live-action remake trend of animated classics in Hollywood.
But when Brothers Grimm made a successful retelling of the tale of Snow White in “Snow White and the Huntsman” in 2012, which did well at the box office, Disney was jolted into its senses, realizing that it has slept on something that was theirs in the first place.
That’s when the company decided to produce the Angelina Jolie-starrer “Maleficent” which came out in 2014 and remarkably did well at the tills, making $758.4 million worldwide. It was followed by “Cinderella” which hit theaters only last month and is still making money. As of this time, the film is said to be raking $335.7 million in worldwide box office.
Since then, Disney Pictures has been on a live-action remake binge. The production company is already working on the sequel to “Alice in Wonderland,” officially titled as “Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass,” and also “Jungle Book”, as well as the live-action retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” reportedly starring British actress Emma Watson as Belle.
“Mulan” would be the seventh live-action remake of Disney and its fourth in the pipeline once pre-production and filming for the movie begins.
Mum’s the word
There is still no release date as well as cast members for the live-action remake of “Mulan” and so are the other Disney live-action films in the pipeline but the studio has already bought a script for the movie that were written by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek. It is expected that the live-action remake of “Mulan” would be a blockbuster too just like its animated version shown 17 years ago.
“Mulan” is the story of young Chinese woman who disguises herself as a man so that his ailing father would not be drafted by the Chinese military in its fight against Mongolia.
As a patriarchal country, it is illegal for Chinese women to serve in the military but Mulan managed to pull through and even led the Chinese military to victory.