I'm not so sure. Lion king did 1.6bil. Sure it's not anyone's favourite live action remake but I can see this doing well enough. I doubt it hits the firsts high. But The ip is powerful enough to have people give it a chance since, as you say, it's not a remake. I've said it before, they should have just skipped lion king and just did this instead.
I'm sure all that will be brought up. But what's the actual issue? There's no need for them for a lot of people. They sell on their history of the original and a huge percentage of people leave and go, eh, the original was better, what was the point? Disney knows this so they keep making them. It's always going to be a catch 22. Stray to far from the original and people will be mad, keep it too similar, what's the point. So I personally expect that everyone will complain about all the usual things, they'll still make money, therefore Disney keeps pushing forward. Unless the next few bomb lightyear/wish hard, pixar films are coming.
Oh I tell it to that turd of a film series every chance I get.
In all seriousness, I don't think many have a problem with sequels. It's the over reliance on them that people are a bit fed up with, cough*toystory5*cough
Personally, if the live action remake endeavor was telling storys within the ips universe, sequel/prequel/ all new characters and story...they would be much more accepted. If they had done that, I know I'd be up for it.
The other thing is they should have limited actual remakes to something they could actually make better than the original. Beware, broken record time. Something like the black cauldron is perfect to try and remake. There's not many who hold that film as a classic Disney production. So you then don't have the weight of something like a mermaid, Aladdin, snow White, lion king...to compare to.
