Miracle on Rebranding Street

As part of the publicity buildup to the launch of its new streaming service, Disney+, Disney unleashed a massive Twitter storm last week — scores and scores of Twitter posts, all at once — depicting the various movies and TV shows that will be offered by the service.

This image attracted some attention:

It’s the classic 1947 movie “Miracle on 34th Street,” one of my favorites. Disney acquired it when they recently purchased the parent company of 20th Century Fox studios. But it’s the only 20th Century Fox movie in the Twitter storm that has been specifically re-branded as a Disney movie. The image for “The Sound of Music,” for example, doesn’t have a Disney logo on it, even though it’s just as much of a family-friendly classic as “Miracle.”

Disney, by the way, did not start making live-action movies until a few years after “Miracle on 34th Street” came out. Its first, “Treasure Island,” started production in 1949 and was released in 1950.

As I said, “Miracle on 34th Street” is one of my favorites. It’s been remade twice. In 1973, it was remade in color (the original was in black and white, despite the Twitter graphic) as a TV movie starring David Hartman (the original host of “Good Morning America”), Jane Alexander and…