Looking at the Disney line-up for the next few years can make audiences do a double-take and wonder if they’d stepped back in time

Following the success of the live action remake of “Beauty and the Beast” in 2017, Disney planned to remake several classics from its extensive film collection.

“Aladdin” and the critically acclaimed CGI disaster that was “The Lion King” remake are only the tip of the iceberg for Disney’s plans for remakes.

Disney isn’t the only culprit of rebooting films or series with the intention of catching audiences by their nostalgic inner child.

Netflix rebooted “Sabrina,” HBO is remaking “Watchmen,” yet another Batman movie is in the works and it looks like there will be a new “Star Wars” movie released every year from now until the end of time.

It’s not that we don’t have new ideas; books are still being released and people are still creating new and compelling stories.

Needless to say, it’s easier and cheaper for companies to remake something that already exists than it is for them to start from scratch with new ideas and stories.

There are writers to pay and actors to cast, and those things take time. Why bother with all that when a scene-for-scene recreation of a film from the ’90s is just as likely to fill theater seats?

I argue that children deserve more than simple recreations of the same things their parents saw as kids. We should be striving to tell new and compelling tales.

The Walt Disney Company has an estimated worth somewhere around the $130 million mark.

The company has its hands in just about every pot when it comes to the media and entertainment industry.

Most of the Disney properties weren’t even original stories to begin with; most stories were adapted from fairy tales or other books. Yet, Disney managed to tell the stories that had been repeated for centuries in new and compelling ways in a new format.

The reboots and remakes that the company peddles today are not this; they are shameless and empty-hearted cash grabs that take advantage of the nostalgia of the generation that grew up with the films they are recreating.

As a superpower in the entertainment industry, wouldn’t it make sense for them to be doing more than repeating the same pieces over and over?

Don’t children today, and the audience of media at large, deserve more than pandering to nostalgia and a formula to fill seats and sell tickets?

Zoë Donovan is a junior journalism major. They can be reached at 581–2812 or at zedonovan@eiu.edu.