Disney’s trend for remaking their own animated classics in live-action – or at least, with CGI animation – has focused on more recent movies of late, with both 1992’s Aladdin and 1994’s The Lion King getting reboots this year. So, it’s not surprising that the 2020s will see them moving forward with remakes of films originally released in the 2000s.
Sources close to We Got This Covered – the same ones who told us Aladdin was getting a sequel, which has since been confirmed – have informed us that 2009’s The Princess and the Frog is another property that the Mouse House is looking to give a new coat of paint. We’ve previously brought you the news that new versions of Robin Hood, Treasure Island, Sword in the Stone and many more are also being worked on and at this point, it seems Disney’s entire animated history is up for grabs. And while plans can always change, our sources stress that after seeing how well their recent live-action remakes have been doing at the box office, the studio is very eager to continue pumping them out for many years to come.
Princess and the Frog in particular is a notable entry in the Disney canon as it stands as the last effort from the Mouse House that utilized traditional 2D animation. Its failure to make a boom at the box office caused Disney to fully commit to CG animation and interestingly, the studio also decided to make sure that future titles were less female-oriented, hence the likes of Tangled and Frozen. So, either the remake will feature a new name or Disney may have changed their minds in today’s cinematic climate.
Despite its limited success, protagonist Tiana is still part of the official Disney Princesses line, with the heroine a popular one as she was the first African-American princess in the canon. Tiana also recently returned for a cameo in Ralph Breaks the Internet with the rest of the Mouse House’s leading ladies. So, the movie’s brand, if you want to put it that way, is still viable, meaning a Princess and the Frog remake could conceivably make a bigger impact than the original whenever it eventually gets here.