Disney has found a new way to bring one of its most valuable holiday properties back to screens, and this time the burglars are woodland animals. Mickey’s Home Alone, an animated holiday special that borrows the premise of the 1990 comedy classic, premieres November 26 at 6 p.m. ET/PT on Disney Jr., with streaming on Disney+ following a day later on November 27. The first trailer is now out.
The setup will feel familiar to anyone who grew up with Kevin McCallister. Mickey is looking forward to a quiet Christmas at home until Minnie surprises the gang with tickets to spend the holiday at a world-famous Ice Palace. In the scramble to get out the door the next morning, Mickey and Pluto get left behind. With the house to themselves, they end up defending their Christmas dinner from a raccoon and a weasel who want it for themselves.
It’s worth being clear about what this is. Despite how it’s being framed online, this isn’t a remake in any traditional sense. It’s a preschool-friendly riff on a famous premise, aimed at the Disney Jr. audience rather than the adults who quote the original every December. Given the source material’s paint cans, blowtorches and tarantulas, a toned-down approach was always going to be necessary.
Disney’s ownership of Home Alone comes from its 2019 acquisition of 21st Century Fox, and the company has tried to revive the franchise before. Home Sweet Home Alone landed on Disney+ in 2021 to a lukewarm reception, which suggests that recreating the original’s appeal with new characters is harder than it looks. Putting Mickey and Pluto into the story is a lower-risk move. It relies on characters audiences already know and avoids any direct comparison with Macaulay Culkin’s performance.
Those stakes help explain why the property keeps getting revisited. Directed by Chris Columbus and written by John Hughes, Home Alone earned more than $476 million worldwide and became one of the most successful family comedies ever made. Its 1992 sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, grossed $356 million on a $28 million budget. Culkin was paid $4.5 million for that film, then a record for a child actor, along with a 15% share of merchandising that extended to the Talkboy recorder.
What remains to be seen is whether Mickey’s Home Alone turns into a recurring seasonal fixture for younger viewers or stays a one-off novelty. If it does well on Disney+, it would not be surprising to see Disney apply the same treatment to more of the classic films in its catalog.