Disney's 'A Christmas Carol' Musical Movie In Development

Disney and Bill Condon team up for (another) 'A Christmas Carol' remake, this time a live-action movie musical

Bill Condon at 'The Beauty and The Beast' Premiere (CREDIT: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

by Jack Linsdell

Hot off the presses, Disney has announced that they have hired Bill Condon to write and direct a live-action, movie musical adaption of Charles Dickens' beloved A Christmas Carol story. Obviously, this is not surprising news, for two reasons. One, in a dying age of theatrical moviegoing (unless your Disney, but more on that in a moment) it seems that the only way to get audiences into cinemas is to revamp old and existing franchise IPs, so considering A Christmas Carol is one of the most popular children's festive stories around, this makes a lot of commercial sense. Two, considering Disney's recent successes with live-action, musical remakes with Condon's A Beauty and the Beast in 2017 and this year's Guy Ritchie-helmed Aladdin flick, both of which earned over a $1 billion worldwide, having another popular IP given the musical treatment makes sense (from their point-of-view). 

Do we need another remake of A Christmas Carol? The short answer, no. Considering there have been ten (!) feature film adaptions of Dicken's novella since 1908, we have seen this story done to death on the big screen, albeit in different versions with different ratings and technologies. Perhaps the most famous version is the Robert Zemeckis-directed, Jim Carrey-voiced animated remake in 2009, which was popular (and controversial) yet despite a half-way solid $325 million global cume, was a relative financial underperformer on a $175-200 million production budget. So, it looks like Disney (who also released that Jim Carrey as Scrooge animated flick) is after another go. 

Even if I'm not excited about another cinematic adaption of A Christmas Carol, I will say I'm intrigued how it's existence as a live-action musical will turn out. Disney's Aladdin was a fantastic movie when it came out this summer, and a rare example where the hype and commercial overperformance was justified, and I enjoyed it massively. So, Disney has earned a bit of a "trust card" from me when it comes to this one based on how well Aladdin turned out. Also, Bill Condon is writing and directing this one, and considering he's nothing short of a movie musical pioneer/master, then this gives the film more chance of being half-way decent. Yes, I'm a big musical fan as much as I am an action man too, so a musical adaption is exciting. Not to mention, Condon also co-wrote the (also brilliant) The Greatest Showman as well as having directed musical masterpieces like Chicago and Dream Girls, both of which had great Oscar success. 

So, all this is a roundabout way of saying that although I sighed when I first read that A Christmas Carol was getting another feature-film remake (not forgetting the currently in-production musical adaption of the property from Apple TV with Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell circling the lead role), knowing Bill Condon was at the helm and that it's adaption would be succinctly different from the rest (being in musical form), I was kind of excited/intrigued too. Yes, Disney did well with Aladdin so who's to say they can't successfully make A Christmas Carol into the next $1 billion-grossing live-action adaption? Anyway, A Christmas Carol has yet to be given a release date, but with original music from Stephen Schwartz, stay tuned to this one.