Enchanted director rightfully bummed about not getting to make Disney Plus sequel

Director Kevin Lima is 90s Disney royalty. After working on Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty And The Beast, he directed the seminal Goofy movie, A Goofy Movie. In 2007, he directed Enchanted, a “love letter to Disney,” as he calls it, but unfortunately, for the long-gestating Enchanted sequel, Disenchanted, Disney went with a new director, Adam Shankman. These things certainly happen, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to like it, and Kevin Lima seems rightfully bummed out about the whole thing.

“A perfect storm of a change of executives and Hollywood politics made it so that I was uninvited to the party, unfortunately,” Lima told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a very, very sad turn. I haven’t seen the movie; I haven’t read the script. So I’m going to experience the characters that I helped create, grow and live on as the audience does.”

Lima’s film went on to make $340 million at the worldwide box office, despite the marketing department, which “didn’t have faith that the movie was worth making,” Lima said. In classic Disney form, guns are for boys, and princesses are for girls: “They didn’t think boys would go to see this movie, and the marketing department did their best to shut down the movie a couple of times while we were in pre-production.”

So, of course, instead of Lima directing another movie, something he hasn’t done since Enchanted, we got another Disney+ sequel destined for the memory hole. Needless to say, we weren’t big fans of the movie. Writing for The A.V. Club, reviewer Courtney Howard summed it up:

Shot and assembled more like a Disney Channel Original rather than a spectacle-driven sequel to an Oscar-nominated blockbuster, Shankman’s film leaves audiences wanting more—and not in a good way. Its lack of legitimate wit, cleverness, and focus makes a promising concept feel like a wasted wish, conjuring little of the magic that made its predecessor feel so memorable.

Maybe they should’ve called Lima.