‘Aladdin’ may not be the movie of the year in most folks’ opinions, but it quietly stole the summer, coasting on its flying carpet past the $1 billion mark while other wannabe-blockbusters– ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters‘, ‘Men In Black: International’, ‘Dark Phoenix‘– came and went. While Disney’s live-action remakes tend to be one-and-done affairs, meant to simply remake the original animated films, it’s possible that ‘Aladdin’ could transcend that and actually warrant a sequel.
Speaking to ComicBook.com, producer Dan Lin revealed:
“We certainly, when we first made the movie, wanted to just make the best movie we could and let audiences tell us if they wanted to see more. And I would say resoundingly audiences want to see more. They’ve watched this movie multiple times. We have lots of fan letters about people who really go back and they bring their friends and bring their family. And so we feel like there’s more story to tell. We are going to treat it the same way we treat the original Aladdin movie and not going to do a shot by shot remake of anything that’s been done before. We’re really looking at what’s been done before in the past and the home video, and there’s just more story to tell with the underlying materials. So without giving away too much, we are certainly exploring where we can go with this franchise.”
In addition to scoring the riches of a sultan at the box office, ‘Aladdin’ has already won its first accolades, sweeping the Teen Choice Awards in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie categories, winning for “Choice” Movie Actor for Will Smith, and Actress for Naomi Scott. Mena Massoud, who plays Aladdin, was nominated in the same category as Smith, while Marwan Kenzari, who plays Jafar, was nominated for Choice Villain, but lost to Josh Brolin for his portrayal of Thanos in ‘Avengers: Endgame’.
The original 1992 animated ‘Aladdin’ received two direct-to-video sequels, ‘Aladdin: The Return of Jafar’, and ‘Aladdin and the King of Thieves’, followed by an ongoing animated series. Lin mentioned “what’s been done before in the past and the home video,” which could mean that the filmmakers could look to these stories for inspiration.
Did you enjoy ‘Aladdin’? Would you like to see another live-action movie with this cast?
