For 30 years, Home Alone has endured as a beloved Christmas favorite. Ever since the slapstick comedy rocketed to over $475 million at the box office after hitting theaters in November 1990, the iconic family film has been a staple of the holiday calendar. On an annual basis, millions of people around the world sit back and watch Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister deal with the Wet Bandits, even though everyone knows the story beat for beat.
That kind of warm and fuzzy nostalgia is what festive flicks are all about, but director Chris Columbus has made it pretty clear that he’s dead against the idea of Home Alone being rebooted. As far as most folks are concerned, the franchise ended after two movies, but there’s been a further three sequels released between 1997 and 2012, while a reboot is currently shooting that will bring Culkin back for a cameo.
There’s also a stoner version in the works that has Ryan Reynolds attached to produce, and the imaginatively-titled Stoned Alone finds a 20-something washout miss the plane for his skiing holiday and decided to blaze it at home instead, only for his house to get broken into. It sounds pretty unimaginative, and Columbus seems to be absolutely furious at the idea.
“The reboots are just silly to me. When I read about something called Stoned Alone, they were going to do with Ryan Reynolds, it was an R-rated Home Alone movie about stoners. I thought to myself, this is just an insult to the art of cinema. If you’re making a comedy, a musical, no matter what film I’m making, my goal is to treat it with the same respect as if I was making The Godfather. Home Alone is not The Godfather, but you have to treat it with that kind of respect and this idea of remaking things that already exist and are working well? Watch the original! Forget about it. It’s just never going to be as good.”
You can’t argue with his point. Any remakes, reboots or loose adaptations of Home Alone are only going to pale in comparison to the beloved original that’s remained a Christmas classic for three decades. Inviting comparisons is never a good thing, and based on the overall quality of Disney Plus’ original movies so far, hopes aren’t particularly high that the reboot or impending stoner spin are going to deliver the goods.