Every Disney Live Action Remake, Ranked
Updated May 2023 to add The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan & Wendy
For over 25 years, Disney has been looking inward for inspiration for its live-action films, using its vast and beloved catalog of animated features as source material for remakes. Buoyed by mostly strong box office numbers, those remakes have been increasing in frequency in recent years, with six arriving just since the start of 2019 and many more expected to arrive in the next few years.
In the gallery above, we rank each of Disney's live-action remakes (from 1994's The Jungle Book to the just-released The Little Mermaid) from best to worst by Metascore, which reflects the critical consensus for each film.
Remake of The Jungle Book (1967)
Disney's second attempt at a (mostly) live-action remake of its Rudyard Kipling adaptation, unlike the first try in 1994, closely follows the template established by the animated classic—including a reliance on animated, talking animals—though director Jon Favreau opted not to make his film another musical as originally planned. When it was released in 2016, the film grossed nearly $1 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing remake in history (though that record would soon be surpassed by another Disney remake). And critics actually scored Favreau's film higher than any of Disney's previous Jungle Book films. (It should come as no surprise that a sequel is in development.)
“The film is a triumph of technology and safe 'family' storytelling. It’s dazzling — almost no one will dislike it.” —David Edelstein, Vulture
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