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Ranking Disney’s Live-Action Remakes

When a studio is as old and has as big a catalog of hits as Disney, it's inevitable to look back through past decades of success stories for a property that can be refreshed and re-appropriated for a modern audience. Lately, Walt Disney Pictures has been making headlines for its rampant revisits to some of its most beloved animated classics, with this year's The Jungle Book serving as the most recent example of the studio taking a story from animation to live action. However, in addition to translating these iconic stories into a new visual style, Disney has also sprinkled in several notable remakes of its own live-action films.

Pete's Dragon

3) Freaky Friday (2003)

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Five years after landing her breakout role as the dual leads of The Parent Trap, Lindsay Lohan steps in for Jodie Foster (who starred in the 1976 original film) as the younger half of a mother/daughter duo who swap bodies under mysterious circumstances.

This is one of those Disney stories that hinges on a parent and child who develop a better understanding of each other’s perspectives thanks to supernatural intervention, but where Freaky Friday improves on that premise is in the committed performances of Lohan and co-star Jamie Lee Curtis, the latter of whom even scored a Golden Globe nomination for her role. Director Mark Waters would make an even bigger pop cultural splash when he re-teamed with Lohan for Mean Girls the following year, but as for her work with Disney, Freaky Friday is about as good as it gets.