Production Begins on Disney’s Live-Action “Mulan”

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

Disney has continued to make themselves into the biggest media company on Planet Earth, partially by strip-mining their vault for any of their animated classics they can make into a live-action movie. (Yet we still don't have a Blu-ray of The Brave Little Toaster.) Cinderella was one of the 10 biggest movies of 2015. The Jungle Book was one of the five biggest movies of 2016. And Beauty and the Beast was the second-biggest movie of 2017. They've also achieved smaller-scale success with the Pete's Dragon remake, and the adjacent movies Christopher Robin and Maleficent.

And next year sees the release of three of their remakes – Dumbo, Aladdin and The Lion King – in a span of four months, though I wouldn't be surprised if one of those titles moves to the fall. But they're still hard at work on even more, including Mulan, which just began production.

The film will shoot in New Zealand and China, and thankfully features an all Asian and Asian-American cast, including Liu Yifei (The Forbidden Kingdom), Donnie Yen (Rogue One) and Jason Scott Lee (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story). Disney has had its share of controversies in the last year, but white-washing Mulan won't be one of them.

The original 1998 film grossed $120 million domestically, and was overshadowed by Pixar's second effort A Bug's Life. But it's endured a better reputation than some of Disney's other '90s efforts, mainly because it served as inspiration for many Asian-American girls, and because of its semi-progressive gender politics. (And no, the vice president was not a fan.)

Mulan will be released on March 27, 2020.

 

 

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About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

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