After grossing over $1 billion worldwide last summer, Disney’s remake of their animated film “Aladdin” will get a theatrically released sequel, multiple individuals with knowledge of the project confirmed to TheWrap.
The sequel will be produced by Dan Lin and Jonathan Ehrich of Rideback, who produced the live-action film starring Mena Massoud as Aladdin and Will Smith as the powerful Genie he frees from a magic lamp. The film was released on Memorial Day weekend last year and grossed $355 million domestically and $1.05 billion worldwide, making it one of a record seven billion-dollar hits that Disney released in 2019.
While it has not been determined whether remake director Guy Ritchie will return for the sequel, the script will be an entirely new story written by John Gatins and Andrea Berloff. Gatins, who wrote the 2012 Robert Zemeckis/Denzel Washington film “Flight,” most recently worked on the script for Lionsgate’s 2018 film adaptation of “Power Rangers.” Berloff, who received an Oscar nomination as co-writer of the 2015 film “Straight Outta Compton,” most recently made her directorial debut with last summer’s crime film “The Kitchen,” which she also wrote.
Disney’s plans to remake their classic animated films in live-action and CGI form have been very lucrative since the series began with the Tim Burton remake of “Alice in Wonderland” in 2010. Four of those remakes — “Alice,” “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King” — have grossed over $1 billion worldwide, with a fifth nearly joining them as Jon Favreau’s 2016 adaptation of “The Jungle Book” grossed $966 million. That film also has a sequel in development with Favreau set to return as director, though the timetable for that project is up in the air as Favreau is currently working on season 2 of the Disney+ series “The Mandalorian.”
Gatins is repped by UTA while Berloff is repped by CAA and Management 360. The sequel was first reported by Variety.