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Generation X didn’t grow up in a golden age of Disney animated features. We’re a little too young for the classics like The Jungle Book and Robin Hood, and most of us were just a little old when the revival truly started with The Little Mermaid in 1989. Instead, we got movies like Pete’s Dragon, The Fox And The Hound, and Oliver and Company.
No one really wants remakes of those, but another movie from that era is ripe for the Disney live-action remake treatment, just like Lilo & Stitch for the 2025 movie schedule. That film is now-cult classic: The Black Cauldron. Sure, it may have terrified us as kids, but we’d line up to see a modern retelling of this classic story.
The Black Cauldron Is A Perfect Choice, Because It’s No One’s Favorite
The Black Cauldron definitely has fans among Gen Xers (and Xennials). Beyond that, though, the movie just doesn’t have the panache of the classic cartoons from Disney’s early heyday, or get nearly the kind of love that movies that came after it, like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty And The Beast, do. The Black Cauldron came out of a black hole in Disney’s history, but luckily, it’s still available with a Disney+ subscription.
Even the most strident Disney fans have, at times, been frustrated with the checkered history of the more recent live-action remakes. Some don’t think they hit the same emotional notes as their animated counterparts, while others think Disney changes up the classic stories too much. Disney, some argue, is taking some of our fondest movie memories and trashing them. It’s impossible to mess with classics and not get some significant backlash. That’s what makes The Black Cauldron so perfect.
The movie may have achieved cult status among a certain segment of fans, but no one would ever rank it at the top of the best Disney animated movies. I doubt many would have it in their Top 10 or even Top 25. That means you can’t “ruin” someone’s childhood memories with a live-action re-telling of The Chronicles of Prydain, the book series that the 1985 box office bomb was loosely based on.
It Has Franchise Potential
If there is one thing we know for sure, it’s that Disney loves a franchise. Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones… the company just loves IP that it can go back to over and over. The Chronicles of Prydain, written by author Lloyd Alexander in the 1960s, is five books, themselves loosely based on Welsh mythology. There are plenty of stories to tell and movies to be made based on the hit fantasy series.
The Balck Caudron used the first two novels of the series as its inspiration, but there is plenty of story in the first novel to split them up. There are legitimately five or six potential movies from this one series. It’s a Disney dream. The House of Mouse will have to sell people on the idea that remaking a box office bomb is worth seeing, but I don’t think we need to worry about those marketing abilities. Besides, there is enough goodwill from both fans of the Alexander books and, indeed, the original Black Cauldron to make a well-made live-action remake a success.
Disney Already Owns The Rights To The Series
In 2016, Disney announced that it had re-acquired the rights to The Chronicles of Prydain. At the time, the company seemed primed to produce a live-action version of the entire series. Unfortunately, nine years later, we’re still waiting, and there hasn’t been any production news at all since. We’ve got a Moana remake coming up next year, and a whole slew of possibilities in the coming years, but, as of yet, no The Black Cauldron or The Chronicles of Prydain in any way.
I don’t know what it would take to get this story back on Disney Animation’s radar. Maybe if we all decided to rewatch the original on Disney+ one week, and got the movie into the Top 10 on the streamer, it could gain some traction. Like the letter-writing campaigns of years gone by.
There Are Some Understandable Drawbacks
It would be irresponsible of me not to acknowledge some of the problems with remaking The Black Cauldron. For starters, it’s a scary movie for kids. I was terrified when I first saw it. It involves a zombie army that would seem more like a Game of Thrones plotline than that of a Disney animated movie. The Horned King himself, the villain in the story, is one of the scariest villains in all of Disney history. The red, glowing cauldron haunted my nightmares for years. So, that is something to consider.
Finally, it was, after all, a terrible bomb at the box office. At the time, it was the most expensive Disney animated movie ever made. It cost the company a reported $40 million to produce, and it took in barely half of that at the box office in the summer of 1985. It was out-grossed that year by two different Disney re-releases, Pinocchio and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. There’s good reason it’s often called the movie that almost killed Disney Animation.
It Was Ambitious, And It Could Be Again
For all its failings, there is something to be said for how ambitious the project was. The animation in The Black Cauldron is wonderful, on par with even the best Disney movies, and the story it is based on has real potential on the big screen.
There are a million reasons why the powers that be would be nervous to remake it, but there are just as many reasons it could be a huge success if done correctly. I think we need to give it a chance. Forget tarnishing the legacy of a past hit and strive to rehabilitate an already tarnished legacy instead.