'Lan Of Duty

Adrenaline-pumping battle sequences and epic landscapes as Disney’s latest live-action remake gets down to business.

- MULAN

When news first broke that Disney had greenlit a live-action remake of the 1998 animation Mulan, which featured captivating songs and a wise-cracking dragon sidekick voiced by Eddie Murphy, many may have expected a slavishly faithful recreation of the beloved original. After all, neither Guy Ritchie’s live-action Aladdin nor Jon Favreau’s The Lion King did much to deviate, and both went on to earn more than $1 billion at the global box office. However, a musical was never on the cards for Mulan.

“Honestly, that was never a discussion I had with Disney,” director Niki Caro confirms to Teasers. Instead, Caro turned to the source. “Both I and the studio were really committed to honoring the DNA of the 1998 animation and the centuries-old Ballad Of Mulan on which the story is based – but we always knew we wanted to make something completely new. This was never going to be a frame-by-frame retelling of the story.”

For the uninitiated, Mulan is the story of a fearless maiden who masquerades as a man in order to take her elderly father’s place in the Imperial Army when an invasion threatens the empire. It’s an epic journey of discovery where the disguised hero goes on to become one of China’s greatest warriors. “For me, it was such a privilege to tell a story that’s been relevant for hundreds and hundreds of years,” explains Caro, who rose to fame as the director of the Academy Award-nominated Whale Rider and has since directed Charlize Theron in