I'm worried about Disney. You see Disney's always been held up as being an
example of one of the most creative companies out there and they've in the
history produced some of the best artistic work across the film genre
I don't think anyone can disagree with that just based on their track record of
how consistently they've produced high-quality work
but I'm worried that it might be coming to a close soon you see yesterday we went to the cinema
to watch the new Mary Poppins film and I did that with my fiancee because we both
had such beautiful memories of the original Mary Poppins film for many many
many decades ago that we both watched when we were children
but what I noticed is
there is a theme that's become more and more prevalent in the cinema industry
but specifically with Disney in the last couple of years
Disney seems to just be taking its original ideas from many decades ago
that that they know of worked and they're just producing new versions of it
they're producing live-action remakes or high-quality CGI remakes of some of
their most beloved animated movies from many years ago and Mary Poppins is one
example of this
many of you know the Julie Andrews version I think it was
from the 1960s which is still a beautiful classic movie nowadays
especially at the time when it fused live-action performance with animation
but the one that I watched yesterday just seemed to fall quite flat.
Not only that it seemed to more or less imitate the original film by having a new
version of more or less every feature from the original film, from the dancing
lamplighters compared to the the the Chimney Sweeps, the chore songs in the
house the sad song followed by the more upbeat song, even the same nanny dealing
with essentially the same set of children and worst of all
a dance number where the same animated Penguins from the original film danced with the new
Mary Poppins in the new film
thisisn't the only example of this
in the last couple of years Disney has already made remakes of The
Jungle Book, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland and also
recently what list of movies they've got coming up as live-action remakes
some of you may have already seen the adverts for Dumbo which which were
playing as previews during the Mary Poppins film but they've also got
Aladdin (one of my favorite movies of all time) they've got a new digital version
of The Lion King, they've got the Little Mermaid, they've got even lady in the
Tramp (an animated film about dogs that they're gonna redo as a new high
quality CG movie with live-action) and the question I ask myself is why are
they doing this? why is the company that's synonymous with originality and
creativity relying on the ability to just retake its previous ideas and more
or less reproduce them, not quite word-for-word but following the same
story beats? and the answer is it's always a lot safer to just go off what's
previously worked than to try something risky by being original and Disney has
produced some remakes recently and the numbers actually back
up that this is a sound financial decision for them
I've got the the list of the the recently released movies here I mean The Jungle Book that they
released a couple years ago made nearly a billion dollars, it made nine hundred
and sixty six million dollars in the worldwide box-office
Cinderella that they released in 2015 made five hundred and forty three
million dollars, Maleficent with Angelina Jolie made seven hundred and fifty eight
million dollars and then there's Alice in Wonderland which made over a billion
dollars, and Beauty and the Beast which recently made more than 1.2 billion
dollars. these are numbers that up until a couple of years ago when
the real franchise franchise system really started coming into Hollywood
were just unheard of and so Disney is looking at these numbers and it kind of
serves as evidence that people are willing to go and watch the same story
retold in a different way especially people who are nostalgic and remember
fondly the original animated movies from their childhood
like I did myself. now it doesn't always work they've also had two movies which
were not quite as successful Pete's dragon which was a remake of the
original animated Pete's dragon which only made 143 million dollars which is
still a huge amount of money and then Christopher Robin which came out yes
last year sorry the remake of Winnie the Pooh which only made 197 million dollars
which is still nearly two hundred million dollars but it just shows that
from a business standpoint Disney has made a calculated decision that people
are willing to pay for nostalgia and there seems to be this wave of nostalgia
that comes in a generational format I have many Disney movies from my
childhood that I remember very fondly and people who grew up before me also
have Disney movies that they remember very fondly and as our generations grow
up and new movies come out that we remember fondly from our childhoods we
probably want to take our own children to go and watch those last last night in
the cinema there were a couple of families there with young children
the parents of film probably remembered Mary Poppins very fondly now whether or
not the movie is as good as the original one is up for debate. personally I didn't
like the new Mary Poppins as much as the original one but is it okay for Disney
to retake these old ideas just for a financial gain rather than actually
investing in producing new original ideas which might be more risky but have
the potential of inspiring a whole new generation of children and adults and
creators themselves? so let me know down in the comments below whether or not you
think it's okay to just rehash old ideas or whether or not you think it's
important to actually invest in new creative ideas even though there's a
high risk that they might not work. so once again thank you for listening it's
been Nick Skillicorn here from idea to value, don't forget to go to idea to
value .com and sign up for our newsletter, sign up for our free training and yeah I
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