John Lasseter and Ed Catmull have already put their foot down at Disney’s animation studio: no sequels. Now if they could just extend that concept to “no remakes” and make it a company-wide policy. Disney keeps looking at their classic movies like The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog as fodder for remakes. As of yet, however, none of their remakes have been as memorable or successful as the original movie, which helped build the studio’s success and remain as time honored legacies for Disney. Clearly the lack of success hasn’t stopped them so far, so why stop now?
The Hollywood Reporter has announced Andy Fickman will be taking on a remake of one of my favorite Disney classics, 1975’s Escape to Witch Mountain. Now simply cut down to Witch Mountain in title, the movie will still follow a brother/sister team with special abilities on the run from mysterious men who want to exploit the sibling’s talent.
The original movie remains one of my favorite Disney live-action films, although the sequel Return to Witch Mountain was a little more high-profile with Bette Davis and Christopher Lee involved. The movie has already been remade once, as a made-for-television movie in 1995, with mixed responses.
This isn’t the first time Fickman has taken on someone else’s material. Previously he’s directed and produced the adaptation of Reefer Madness: the Movie Musical and handled She’s the Man, a miserably painful adaptation/homage of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, before moving to Disney with The Game Plan, the film coming out later this year which looks like it’ll be moving Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson onto Vin Diesel’s career path. Fickman is also slated to direct the Fame remake that has had a little bit of talk previously. Reefer Madness, Fame, Twelfth Night, and The Pacifier… wouldn’t it be nice to see this director do something original?
