Imagine. You wait 23 years for Hollywood to carbon copy a Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders animation in live action form and two come along at the same time. And they say creativity is dead. What’s more, each facsimile is proving a monster hit in its own right. One can but imagine the wild ride 2025 is proving to be for DeBlois and Sanders. With Disney now no longer the sole studio exponent of the toon-to-live cash in, the form is more genre than trend these days. AI should make the process quicker. Feed the original through an app, with ‘remake in live action’ as your filter and the new-ish How to Train Your Dragon is your result.
The furry blue foot remains very much within the box for Dean Fleischer Camp’s Lilo & Stitch, a live action replication of the Disney animated classic. 2002’s OG Hawaiian rollercoaster ride proved something of a rare bright spot in an era of woe for the House of Mouse. Amid a string of middling efforts in the noughties, only Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois’ toon enjoyed both critical and commercial success. Extoling the virtues of family and second chances, Lilo & Stitch struck a multi-generational chord, tickling the old and young alike. 2025’s effort boasts a little less Elvis but a lot more of the same.
A delectable premise finds maniacal delivery in Drop, a taut new thriller from Happy Death Day’s Christopher Landon. As penned by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, the film boasts the sort of idea so ripe for mining that it’s perplexing to think nobody has done so before. An AirDrop thriller for the iPhone era. Drop was, in fact, conceived only when the girlfriend of its executive producer, Sam Lerner, began receiving dodgy Shrek memes one night in a packed restaurant. It’s no huge leap to climb from crass to creepy and then on to criminal. In Landon’s hands, it’s splendidly scaled.
The Film Blog 