Michael Gracey’s live action take on Tangled for Disney looks to have been put on pause, with Snow White’s box office not helping.
Might the era of live action Disney animation remakes be coming to an end? Much has been written, and not all of it particularly pleasant, about the box office performance of the firm’’s new Snow White film over the last few weeks. But commercially, there’s little doubt it’s fallen short for Disney. Costing over $200m to make, its box office hasn’t covered its production costs yet, and fingers have been pointed as to why.
The ramification though, at least the immediate one, appears to be being felt by Tangled. This was said to be moving at some speed, with Michael Gracey – he of The Greatest Showman and Better Man – signing on the dotted line to direct the film (although it had been going through the system since 2020).
There was a script, too, penned by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. It looked like it was heading towards production, but it sounds as though Disney has been spooked by Snow White. Not that it’s said anything publicly about this, but it’s being reported in the Hollywood trades.
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Disney already has Lilo & Stitch coming this summer, of course, and the expectation of that is it’ll be a monster hit. Beyond that, there’s a live-action Moana coming, as well as an animated Moana 3 now expected. And that might just be the end of the immediate pipeline.
In the absence of formal confirmation, it’s not clear whether Tangled is dead altogether or just on pause while Disney shuffles its cards. But there’s a sense that the studio has been spooked by what should have been a sure-fire hit simply not hitting.
More on Tangled – which exists as a very good animated film already, thank you very much – as and when we hear it. But it might just have slipped into development hell for a very long time.
