Guide to Making a Live-Action Remake of a Beloved Cartoon

It's easy and you'll make big bucks!

The economy is still not great, and you probably could use some extra scratch. Well, a great way to pick up some extra money these days is to get hired to take a beloved cartoon — like an animated movie such as Snow White or an animated series such as Avatar: The Last Airbender — and convert it to live-action.

Studios are throwing money left and right these days to turn cartoons into live-action; some of that money can be yours! Just follow my guide, and you can convert any animated feature or series into a live-action, and all the studios will be hurling bags of cash at you. It’s so easy!

Converting Animation to Live-Action in Twelve Easy Steps

Step 1. Take the original animated script and edit it. This part is easy. Where it says, “Draw this…” change it to “hire actor…” That’s really about it.

Step 2. Cast people who look like the cartoon characters. You just need people who look and sound like the characters from the original, beloved cartoon. There are probably lots of good fan casts to consult.

Step 3. Whoops. They’re all white. Diversify! Yeah, back then, they didn’t think about stuff like that. So, maybe don’t have them all exactly like the cartoon character. Change a few to minorities. Maybe gender-swap some if there aren’t enough female characters. To be on the safe side, don’t have any white males; you’ll never get dinged for not having a white male. And don’t forget LGBTQ. I mean, it was a kid’s cartoon, so no one was supposed to have sex with anyone, but make it clear if they did, it wouldn’t be with the opposite sex.

Step 4. Oh, and I did not remember all these racial slurs in here. We got to recording the dialog, and I guess it is a bit outdated. You should rewrite that all for today’s sensibilities. Like, they don’t even talk about climate change anywhere. Oh, and you can add a rap song. They didn’t have rap back in the day, but I bet it fits now.

Step 5. And we can now have it reference today’s hot-button topics. Maybe the original cartoon was all about gender fluidity, but it just didn’t know it. You can fix that. Perfect for today’s audiences.

Step 6. Crap. This is terrible. I have to warn the studio. Okay, I guess when you mess with it that much, you don’t really have anything left of what people liked in the first place. Why would anyone watch this mess over the original? I need to bite the bullet and tell the higher-ups this isn’t working, and they’ll only lose more money funding it.

Step 7. Wow. They don’t care. What is this? I made it clear this would never earn back the budget, but they just pushed me out of the office and told me to keep going and not to bother them again. And who were those guys in the back of the room speaking Russian? Whoa… why did this car with dark windows pull up in front of me? Hey, they’re grabbing me!

Step 8. Who are you guys with guns? What do you want me to do? Oh wait, they have badges. They say they’re the FBI. They’re telling me the mob runs the studio, and they’re telling me these high-budget live-action remakes are actually an embezzlement scheme. Honestly, I’m kind of happy to hear this. That makes way more sense than they were actually hoping these movies would be successful.

Step 9. Now it’s either inform on the mob or be arrested by the FBI. They wouldn’t believe me that I had no idea what was going on. They’re going to make me wear a wire and gather evidence for them. But if the mob finds me out, I could be killed! I don’t have much of a choice, though; I can’t survive prison. Their gluten-free options are terrible. Okay. I’ll put the wire on. Now, to go to the meeting with the higher-ups. Hmm. Those guys speaking Russian are here again. They want to pat me down?