Every Disney Live Action Remake, Ranked

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – September 4, 2020

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.

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48 #16: Lady and the Tramp

Remake of ▣ Lady and the Tramp (1955)

An unlikely candidate for a live-action remake—given that most of its characters are animals—this 2019 Disney+ exclusive utilizes far more CGI than your typical "live-action" film to recreate the romance between canines Lady (voiced by Tessa Thompson) and Tramp (Justin Theroux). The new Tramp was co-written by mumblecore master Andrew Bujalski and directed by Charlie Bean (The Lego Ninjago Movie), and reviewers liked it far less than the charming 1955 original.

“Watching the remake over-explain every joke and dramatic beat only increases one’s appreciation for how the original trusted its young audience to understand subtext, satire, and emotional nuance.” —Caroline Siede, A.V. Club

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