Disney to make a live-action Lady and the Tramp for its streaming service
By Buckie Wells
Disney has a made a number of good and bad strides lately, but their plans to make a live-action version of Lady and the Tramp could be one step too far.
Between box office dominance, merchandise revenue and theme park expansion, Disney has never been afraid to demonstrate how successful it is. Across all its acquisitions, including ones in the works, Disney knows what works and how to draw people in.
The studio enjoyed a lot of success recently with its live-action remakes of The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast. As The Lion King sails ahead smoothly, it comes as no surprise that they’re running down the catalog looking for the next hit.
But they might be barking up the wrong tree with Lady and the Tramp.
According to Deadline, Disney employed The Lego Ninjago Movie‘s director Charlie Bean to helm the new film for 2019, which will be available exclusively for the Disney streaming service. More importantly, the report clearly states that it will be a live-action/CGI adaptation.
Of course, one might ask, “How’s that any worse than The Jungle Book and Lion King, which both feature main casts that were predominantly talking animals in their respective animated films?” Well, here’s the thing: those are wild animals. No one expected Disney to train a giant bear or lion to act or sing in a film. The CGI makes sense.
Using computer graphics to recreate two domestic dogs in Lady and the Tramp, however, does not make sense or seem okay. Obviously, CGI has come a long way since the live-action Scooby-Doo films came out. But why would Disney try to recapture the elegance and magic of Lady and the Tramp? Especially on a streaming-only budget? I can’t imagine the spaghetti-sharing scene will be as heartwarming with two CGI dogs. And if they decided to not CGI them and opt to bring in real dogs, it would be even weirder because their mouths don’t move. For an idea of what that looks like, watch Homeward Bound.
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It would kind of be like if Disney said, “we’re making a live-action remake of Cars next.” That’s either going to play like a really good Ford commercial or turn into Transformers. Some things just need to stay animated.
The only idea worse than this would be to remake the Aristocats.