Yall...don’t say that you “hate disney remakes” and “wish disney would come out with original content instead” and then go to see the Lion King because you want to see how bad it is.
Disney is still making money, whether you go because you want to genuinely see it or you go because you want to see how much you hate it.
Disney recieves all its messages in money. If Lion King flops, they’ll stop making these shitty remakes. Please, for the love of our childhoods, don’t go see this movie as a joke.
(Bruh look at how stiff and lifeless it is compared to the original. Sure, it looks realistic, but it lacks character!)
except they wont stop making them.
these movies are not simple cashgrabs
theyre specifically made for copyright laws to keep their stories and characters from becoming public domain.
dont see the movies duh they suck but theyre not simple cash grabs riding nostaligia and only that, theyre specifically saving their own asses from having to give up their precious characters to the public domain. disney has a lot of money lobbying for harsher copyright and making copyright indefinite, and they have had some copyright guidelines legally changed to suit them.
its really not this simple.
I keep seeing this being argued and that’s..... NOT how copyright works. In fact specifically Disney went to court to make sure it doesn’t work like that. It used to be the property would enter public domain after roughly the lifespan of the creator, but now properties have to be idle for 75 years (basically, nothing produced with those characters and licenses for that long) in order to enter public domain. Here’s the problem with this “It’s all about renewing copyright” idea: most of Disney’s properties were already public domain to begin with.
They couldn’t even claim ownership of Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty etc. when they originally premiered because they’re centuries old folk tales already well incorporated into the public domain. Hence why it wasn’t outright illegal for companies to produce knockoffs of the tale to release at the same time, because the story itself is free to use. Original characters like Belle, Ariel and other Disney-only creations for these stories CAN be copyrighted, but most of these films are A. Not even close to being in the 70+ year idle danger zone because they’re at most 35+ y.o, and B. Haven’t even been inactive long enough for that countdown to start yet because Disney released much more recent sequels and shows featuring these characters which act as renewers. Dumbo is the only exception to this rule as the unproduced Dumbo 2 did NOT act as a renewer after Dumbo’s Circus in 86, but even then Dumbo was one of Disney’s only true original properties and one of the older films in the lineup. The Dumbo remake is the only one thesible to the idea of having been made as a renewal.
The Lion King was released in ‘94, twenty-five years ago. However both The Lion King 1 and 1/2, The Lion King 2, Timon and Pumbaa (the Disney Channel show), and the Lion King stage musical have acted as renewers in that time since. 1 and 1/2 was released in 2004, meaning the franchise had only been inactive for 15 years before now. Little Mermaid is in even less danger at only 11 since Ariel’s Beginning in ‘08. And that isn’t even including all the games and digital media these characters have appeared in since their original films.
There’s no beating around the bush. This isn’t about copyright. It never was. It’s about riding the train of late-80s-early-90s nostalgia that has gained prominence lately and making a fast buck off an idea you don’t have to bother to come up with fresh with the added, largely unintentional side result of renewing the copyright. This is 100% about money grabbing. Copyright doesn’t expire after 20 years or whatever.
