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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

2) Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993)

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Okay, this one looks dated technologically speaking, since the talking animals in this remake of the 1963 version don’t sport digitally enhanced mouths to move along with their speech. However, if viewers can get past the apparent telepathy in play among the trio of animal stars (voiced by Don Ameche, Sally Field and Michael J. Fox), they’ll be in for quite a treat.

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Harkening back to a time when animal stories featuring the likes of Lassie and Benji represented an entire subset of family entertainment, director Duwayne Dunham – whose only previous directorial credits were episodes of TV’s Twin Peaks – infuses its animal protagonists with tons of personality and enough heart to have audiences rooting for their safe return home. After the film brought in $41 million during its theatrical run, Disney greenlit a 1996 sequel, Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco.