With Disney seemingly ready to pull the curtain on its Disney+ streaming service soon, some insider leaks of a potential list of programming have been coming out. The Verge recently ran an article listing off the projects and there are a staggering amount of live action remakes, sequels, and mini-series adaptations on the cards. The most baffling one is a remake of Three Men and a Baby, which I can’t imagine anyone is waiting for.
In the remakes column, we have plans for Peter Pan, Pete’s Dragon, Father of the Bride, The Parent Trap, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. While these were all successful films in some fashion, is the brand recognition really going to carry these projects to financial success? I can’t even remember the last time I watched Pete’s Dragon, for instance, and I imagine it would be a hard sell in modern society so fixated on comic book films.
As for original projects, Sister Act 3 is potentially on the cards. I don’t know if Whoopi Goldberg would be returning, but that sounds like an extreme grasp for creating content. There are even plans for another adaptation of The Grimm Legacy of children’s books as well as a film based on the Paper Magician trilogy. A rebooted Muppets series is listed alongside a series centered on The Mighty Ducks.
Rounding out the list is all of the Marvel and Star Wars news that Flixist has independently reported on. There’s the mention of Hawkeye’s individual series, Loki’s personal show, and some project combining Falcon and Winter Soldier. Star Wars is set to receive The Mandalorian, a Rogue One spin-off, and a new season of The Clone Wars. That’s a hell of a lot of franchise building.
As dumb as most of this sounds to me, the biggest benefit I see with Disney+ is the end of the Disney Vault program. A lot of classic films end up being lost for years at a time due to Disney creating artificial scarcity around its properties. While I understand wanting to pay respect to the classics, locking them away from the general public has never made sense to me. Then again, people would show up in droves for DVD releases, so maybe I just don’t understand marketing.
We’ll likely learn more tomorrow as Disney is rumored to unveil the full list of plans for Disney+ at its investor meeting. If we can’t get Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson back for Three Men and a Baby, then is it even worth doing?
All of the shows and films Disney is planning for its Disney+ streaming service [The Verge]
