It’s hard to see how this film wouldn’t appeal to a modern audience, with its steampunk aesthetic and the fact that it centers around sailors and pirates in space. With the Star Wars sequels reminding everyone how much they love space stories, it might be the perfect time to bring this lesser-known Disney classic back.
With the advancements made in CGI over the years, they wouldn’t have a problem creating the vast worlds and aliens that are needed for this story, as well as all of the cyborg body parts of John Silver. Treasure Planet also explores really complex themes around family that could appeal to an older audience, and the relationship between Silver and Jim Hawkins is such an interesting dynamic to look further into.
This movie very notoriously bombed upon its initial theatrical release, so it may not be a high priority for Disney to remake if they want to make a profit, but it may have built up enough of the nostalgia factor among Disney fans that a remake would be successful for them.
Much like Treasure Planet, this is a film that is not one of Disney’s most popular but is beloved by a certain group of fans that harbor a lot of nostalgia for it. Disney has actually been rumored to be remaking this film in live-action, but there hasn’t been a lot of official news on it, so it’s hard to say for certain whether or not it will actually be happening.
If they’re not seriously considering it, though, they absolutely should. A story like this, while it looks beautiful in an animated format, would also work well in live-action, because of the nature of it being a more adult-leaning story than one about, say, talking lions. Of course, there are still fun and magical elements in Atlantis, as well as the classic brand of Disney humor, but it feels more grounded and is more of an adventure story that would work well in live-action.
This is a fairly recent entrance into the Disney canon, and so it might be a strange choice to remake it anytime soon. However, this is something that Disney could definitely consider remaking in the future. The tone of the film worked perfectly as an animated film, and made it so that the story could be light and whimsical while also having some epic fight scenes that might require a lot of CGI in a live-action movie.
The MCU has shown that people have an interest in superheroes, though, and this movie was really well-received when it was released, so it’s a feasible option for Disney to remake it eventually. It would be really fun to see this done with real teenagers and to get to see that kind of dynamic on screen. Perhaps they could even do a remake that’s less of a straight remake of the film we already have, but that takes those characters and puts them in a new situation against a new villain, just to shake things up.
