Cameron FrewFollowing its billion-dollar success, Disney are exploring where they could take Aladdin in the future.
One of Disney’s recent live-action remakes, Aladdin conjured up a winning spell at the box office – currently its worldwide gross sits at $1.03 billion.
Guy Ritchie’s adaptation features a wonderful cast – Disney said ‘it’s the most diverse cast ever assembled for a Disney live action production… more than 400 of the 500 background performers were Indian, Middle Eastern, African, Mediterranean and Asian’ – including Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott and Will Smith as the iconic Genie, made famous by Robin Williams’ timeless voice performance in the 1992 animated original.
Money talks, sequels walk – ComicBook recently spoke to the film’s producer, Dan Lin, about where they could take the characters next. Fans can start to speculate, because Lin said ‘there’s more story to tell with the underlying materials’.
As reported by ComicBook, Lin said:
We certainly when we first made the movie wanted to just make the best movie we could and let audiences tell us if they wanted to see more. And I would say resoundingly audiences want to see more. They’ve watched this movie multiple times. We have lots of fan letters about people who really go back and they bring their friends and bring their family. And so we feel like there’s more story to tell.
We are going to treat it the same way we treat the original Aladdin movie and not going to do a shot by shot remake of anything that’s been done before. We’re really looking at what’s been done before in the past and the home video, and there’s just more story to tell with the underlying materials. So without giving away too much, we are certainly exploring where we can go with this franchise.
While this is far from confirmation of an Aladdin sequel, it’s a glowing indicator of Disney’s mood post-release. With such a large box office haul, it’s highly likely we could spend some more time with Aladdin in the future.
Aladdin is one of several Disney films to reach the billion-dollar milestone. The most-recent ‘live-action’ remake (as in it’s animated), The Lion King, has made a massive $1.33bn at the box office so far – and had the biggest opening weekend ever out of their recent remakes.
The critical reaction to the films has been mixed though – while audiences appear to be lapping up the remakes, Aladdin is currently rated 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, whereas The Lion King sits at 52%. Matthew Lickona, from the San Diego Reader, said: ‘Disney’s do-overs feel a lot like their cash-grabby, inspiration-free ’90s direct-to-video sequels, only with vastly better production values.’
It’s not like that’ll bother Disney though. Film-making for the masses is a money-making game, and they’re the titans of the movie world at the moment – for example, Disney have made more than $18 billion since buying Marvel for $4 billion in 2009.
The next major live-action remakes coming up are Mulan and Lady and the Tramp, the former of which looks set to break itself away from the cartoon theatrics of the original into something more earnest – it looks fabulous.
Check out the trailer below:
We await further news of a live-action Aladdin sequel.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.