Even the Director of This Classic Movie is Tired of Hollywood’s Sequel Culture

Published: August 20, 2025

By Gavin Boyle

As HOME ALONE reaches its 35 year anniversary this Christmas, director Chris Columbus shared why he believes any attempt to remake the movie today is a mistake.

“I think HOME ALONE really exists as, not at this timepiece, but it was this very special moment, and you can’t really recapture that,” Columbus told Entertainment Tonight. “I think it’s a mistake to try to go back and recapture something we did 35 years ago. I think it should be left alone.”

Columbus worked on the first two HOME ALONE MOVIES, both of which hold up extremely well today. The original, of course, remains one of the most popular holiday movies year after year, serving as a movie that is a delight for older and newer audiences alike. The franchise, however, has two other movies, HOME ALONE 3 and HOME SWEET HOME ALONE. HOME ALONE 3 was released in 1997, seven years after the original, and furthermore, does not star MacCaulay Culkin, the face of the first two movies. The movie, however, is still largely entertaining, though the concept of HOME ALONE begins to wear thin.

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Meanwhile, HOME SWEET HOME ALONE, was a TV movie released by Disney in 2021 which has been completely ripped by the public. The failure of this movie further illustrates Columbus’ argument that the original has something special that a remake could not capture today. A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:

HOME SWEET HOME ALONE is a TV movie, so it doesn’t match the high level of the original movie. However, it has its share of laughs and warmth. For example, it has a strong moral, pro-family worldview. In one scene, Max stares at a Nativity scene featuring the Baby Jesus and his human parents. In another, longer scene, a church choir sings “Oh, Holy Night.” MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children, however, because of the amount of slapstick violence in HOME SWEET HOME ALONE. Also, there’s a Non-Christian comment about the universe being mad at a struggling family.

Columbus’ comments come as dozens of old TV shows and movies receive remakes, reboots and sequels. While some of these projects are of high quality and bring something new to an old story, many simply look to cash in on nostalgia and familiar IP, leaving fans unsatisfied.

“Hollywood has always cannibalized itself. But the thing is, it hasn’t just cannibalized itself,” explained Variety owner Owen Gleiberman. “The contradiction of sequel culture, and the threat of it, is that if all you rely on is concepts from the past, you’re not going to produce enough of a future… And when it comes to the trend of making sequels to 40-year-old movies, how many times can we really go back and strip mine the primal nostalgia films like TOP GUN and BEETLEJUICE?”

Unfortunately, Hollywood has good reason to continue to return to old IP because these movies continue to perform exceptionally well in theaters. Of the top ten movies at the box office so far this year, only two of them are not part of a series or a remake of a previous movie. However, Hollywood still has to be careful about which movies it chooses to remake and which movies it allows to remain in the past.

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