People don’t exactly associate the Walt Disney Company with the horror genre, and can you really blame them? These days, Disney seems to be steering as far clear of anything that could potentially isolate any potential audience members as possible, which means deliberately avoiding anything too spooky. However, that’s not how things always were. From its very inception, with shorts like The Haunted House and even key sequences in feature films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (the dark forest sequence famously inspired Dario Argento’s Suspiria) or Fantasia (“Night on Bald Mountain” is one of the most iconic bits of horror animation ever put to-screen, I will not be taking further questions at this time), Disney knew that horror was an integral part of cinematic language and utilized it to genuinely affect results.
There was a brief moment in the ‘90s where even sans Walt, Disney as a studio remembered the inherent value of incorporating horror flourishes into its work. One needs to look no further than films Beauty and the Beast or Hunchback of Notre Dame, both of which see directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise delivering high-octane emotionality anchored in gothic aesthetics and horror hallmarks. This carried over into Disney’s television productions of the era as well, most notably with Gargoyles. For years, there has been a live-action version of this cult classic Disney show in development, but recently it was revealed that Disney has cancelled the planned reboot.
What is Gargoyles? It was the kind of thing that could really only be made in the '90s: a pulpy blend of kitschy gothic literature and the interconnected melodrama of comic books. The result was a ridiculously entertaining series that, like so many other Disney projects before it, embraced the horror genre in fascinating ways. This show sat right alongside the likes of Darkwing Duck as some of the darker-tinged animated projects Disney was putting out at the time, but even within that framework, it stood out. Darkwing Duck is essentially 'What if Batman was Scrooge McDuck?’ Gargoyles was 'What if there were some ancient gargoyle monsters who came to life every night and fought other monsters?’ It was more akin to the Transformers animated series of the time than it was to other Disney projects.
Considering the three seasons of the show have amassed a massive cult following in the decades since Gargoyles ended (with Jordan Peele being an outspoken fan), it isn’t surprising that Disney was trying to get a new version off the ground. What is surprising is that anyone ever thought a live-action version was a good idea. There’s a very distinct look to Gargoyles that isn’t impossible to replicate in live-action, but it would be extremely costly. I could see how this might have seemed like a good idea during those early halcyon days of Disney+ as a streaming platform, when the company was just chucking money into literally anything, but in 2026, it’s painfully obvious that this is a bad idea, creatively and financially.
Now, if Disney would like my advice, something you could do to genuinely capitalize on the popularity of Gargoyles is to give it the X-Men ’97 treatment: an animated continuation. Hell, bring in Jordan Peele and let him be involved. That would bring people to the streamer in a way that another live-action swing-and-a-miss simply wouldn't and do right by the series’ horror roots.
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