Hot on the trail of Disney's live-action remake of is DreamWorks' similar venture with How to Train Your Dragon, setting the stage for future remakes. After the failure of Snow White, Lilo & Stitch's box office success turned things around for Disney. Lilo & Stitch's reviews praise its performances and (mostly) its visuals, making for a movie that captures the spirit of the original story about a lonely Hawaiian girl and her alien best friend while being a distinct new feature. How to Train Your Dragon accomplished many of the same feats, elaborating upon the stories of the supporting characters and delivering on dragon special effects.

Moreover, both After the disappointing returns of The Little Mermaid and Snow White, we had reason to believe that Disney's laser focus on live-action remakes might start to wind down if it wasn't making them the same money as Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. However, we are now likely to see other DreamWorks' live-action remakes, while Disney has plenty more movies left, trending towards the more modern end of their catalog, like Lilo & Stitch.

Whatever we momentarily thought about the impending end of Disney's remake trend, Lilo & Stitch undid this. Despite the controversy surrounding Lilo & Stitch's new ending, the movie has undeniably been a massive success. On a budget of $100 million, Snow White was marred by controversy from the beginning and is simply not as good a movie. We now know that people are still interested in Disney remakes — but while Snow White's CGI dwarves put people off before they even got to theaters, Stitch's excellent (and still cute and fluffy) rendering drew in the biggest possible crowd.

Another issue that may have affected Snow White was the age of its source material. Disney's live-action remakes have thus far been from the Disney Renaissance or earlier. In addition to this remake category becoming stale, Snow White suffered from the wrong approach. Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, the Disney Princess movies closer to the original Snow White's time, were remade as great movies with major variations on the story and visuals. The remakes of the Renaissance era are far more faithful. Trying to hold onto the original visuals while beefing up the story was the wrong way for Snow White to go.

Now, but they can keep going for a while with their animated hits from the 2000s. We may have all raised our eyebrows at the announcements of a live-action Tangled and a live-action Moana, as well as rumors of a live-action Frozen. But now, those movies are probably also going to be hits, especially if members of the original cast return, as Gerard Butler did for How to Train Your Dragon and Chris Sanders for Lilo & Stitch.

Disney's next-up live-action remake is Moana, set to be released in movie theaters on July 10, 2026, with Dwayne Johnson returning to the role of Maui. The Moana franchise also recently saw huge profits with 2024's Moana 2. There is still a lot of enthusiasm for the franchise, and the most recent releases prove that people are not averse to remakes of more modern animation — quite the opposite. Yet Moana may still be the most risky live-action venture yet.

As the latest installment in the animated movie series came out only two years before the remake will be released, this is the smallest gap yet between an original animated movie and a live-action iteration. People have frequently questioned what the point of a movie like How to Train Your Dragon is when the original is still relatively new and very beloved; Moana faces this problem, exacerbated when Moana 2 is still fresh in young viewers' minds. But Lilo & Stitch has paved the way for another modern, successful Disney remake, and now we just have to wait and see.

Source: Box Office Mojo