Disney’s live-action movies are pretty much hit-or-miss, and even though there have been more misses than hits, I don’t really mind them, but I do fear that these other animated movies will get the live-action treatment, too. Disney is home to a wide variety of live-action and animated movies for all ages and tastes, but it will always be remembered as the studio that made some of the best family-friendly animated movies. Although the Mouse House continues to make animated movies, it has been focusing on live-action remakes for years now.

In an effort to give a fresh spin to some of its animated classics, or, simply, to capitalize on them, Disney has chosen some of its animated classics to give them live-action remakes. In most cases, these are proper remakes with a couple of changes to either fix things or modernize them, and there have been others, like Maleficent and Cruella, that have focused on just one character. Although not all Disney live-action remakes have succeeded, I admit I have enjoyed most of them, but I fear the studio will choose these other animated movies to become live-action at some point.

Pixar Movies Getting Live-Action Remakes Would Be Way Too Weird

Pixar Movies Aren’t Made For Live-Action

Although Disney has a long list of animated movies to choose from for live-action remakes, not all of them are popular or well-known enough to go through that treatment – but Pixar has plenty of those. My fear is that Disney will turn its attention to Pixar for live-action remakes, even though that wouldn’t be the best idea. As mentioned above, Disney is a studio that has produced live-action, animated, and live-action/animation hybrid movies for decades, but Pixar has focused only on computer-animated movies, completely leaving live-action behind.

Animation is what Pixar does best and will continue to do, so it wouldn’t make sense if it made live-action remakes of its movies. On top of that, the style of Pixar’s animated movies, both visually and narratively, is very different from that of Disney’s animated movies, leaning a lot more towards fantasy and scenarios that wouldn’t look good in live-action or would have to go through too many changes, potentially losing their essence.

Most Of Disney’s Animated Classics Work In Live-Action (But Not Pixar)

Disney’s Animated Movies Are Different From Pixar’s

Just like Pixar’s movies, Disney’s animated classics have lots of fantasy elements, but they have more human leads than Pixar. This gives Disney movies an advantage over Pixar when it comes to the potential to get live-action adaptations. All of Disney’s live-action remakes so far have worked (to an extent) because of their human characters, while remakes like The Lion King don’t count as live-action and are pH๏τorealistically animated remakes. Although Pixar also has human characters in most of its movies, they still wouldn’t translate well to live-action.

Some of Pixar’s biggest hits, such as the Toy Story saga and Monsters, Inc., just couldn’t work in live-action or as live-action/animation hybrids because they are not meant to be realistic in any way. Disney’s animated classics, on the other hand, despite fantasy elements like magic, talking animals, dragons, and more, can be adapted to live-action a lot more easily as their anchors are their human characters, which isn’t the case for most Pixar movies.

Even those like The Incredibles, Brave, and Coco, all of them led by human characters, would be too strange to watch in live-action – The Incredibles would risk feeling like a Marvel rip-off, Brave isn’t that popular to get enough attention, and Coco thrives in its fantasy elements unique to animation. Disney shows no signs of stopping its live-action remakes, and I hope it won’t choose Pixar movies once they run out of animated movies they can adapt.

Thankfully, It Doesn’t Seem Like Pixar Has Plans For Live-Action Remakes

Pixar Has No Interest In Live-Action Remakes

Luckily, Pixar isn’t interested in going into the realm of live-action remakes – or, at least, not for now. In June 2024, in an interview with Time (via Variety), Pixar’s chief creative officer Pete Docter was asked if he would consider live-action adaptations of the studio’s movies, this after a specific campaign for a live-action Ratatouille went viral on social media. Docter said that the live-action trend “sort of bothers” him, and he likes making original and unique movies, so remaking them isn’t something he’s interested in.

Hopefully, Docter won’t change his mind about live-action remakes of Pixar movies and the studio will continue focusing on original stories (counting sequels to those original works). Disney doesn’t seem to have plans to stop making live-action remakes of its animated classics, but it doesn’t seem like Pixar will join the trend anytime soon or at all.

Source: Time (via Variety).