Disney+ may be live, but it needs to keep adding content. One can only watch 1971’s Golden Globe-nominated Million Dollar Duck so many times, right? Over the summer the company announced they were furiously digging through their newly-acquired avalanche of IP from their big and pretty scary acquisition of Fox, saying they were rebooting, among other Fox properties, Home Alone. Now, as per The Hollywood Reporter, they’ve found their Kevin McCallister, or whatever his new name will be.
The lucky kid who will defend his homestead against thieving intruders is one Archie Yates, one of the break-out young actors in Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi’s Golden Globe-nominated dramedy about a Hitler Youth who’s imaginary friends is the Fuhrer himself (played by Waititi, who in real life is not only not a German anti-Semite but a Polynesian Jew). Yates played Yorki, who stole scenes as another impressionable young lad in thrall to a genocidal, bigoted philosophy.
In the original Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin’s pre-pubescent upper-middle-class suburban kid is left alone after his parents forget to take him on a far-flung Christmas vacation — an accident they made not once but twice. The reboot will reportedly ditch the should-be-criminally neglectful parents, instead having Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney play a couple who go to war with Yates’ protective kid over a priceless heirloom. It’s not clear whether he’ll still punish them in ways that would kill any actual human, nor whether Disney could ever coax Joe Pesci to make another venture away from movie retirement after his award-winning turn in The Irishman. Though we’ll guess the answer is no.
Disney is also threatening to reboot Night at the Museum, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, all for the small screen.
(Via THR)
