Home Alone and Home Alone 2 have both been pulled from Disney’s new subscription based streaming service Disney+. The movies are from 1990 and 1992 respectively, and both star Macaulay Culkin and Joe Pesci, and both were written by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. Columbus hasn’t directed much in a few years, but did direct the first two Harry Potter films, and Home Alone is where his directorial break really came. Culkin, meanwhile, has effectively left behind acting in feature films since his child-star days, but has been working on plenty of other projects since retiring.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York has recently been in the news after people noticed Donald Trump’s cameo appearance was cut in a Canadian TV broadcast of the movie. However, it was cut years before Trump became the U.S. President and was cut along with a number of other scenes to save time and make the movie fit better into a TV broadcast schedule. Still, it’s rare for a movie to reach even brief controversy involving the president a full 28 years after release. The franchise has been in the news an awful lot lately because it has also been announced that Disney will be producing a Home Alone reboot, to go on their Disney+ platform.
Which brings us to today’s news. Collider reports that Home Alone and Home Alone 2 have both been removed from Disney+. The speculation is that even though Disney owns 20th Century Fox, they may not have the right to stream the films domestically. Both are still available for viewing to international Disney+ viewers, as well as a slew of other movies that are currently not available to stream in the United States, including the 1993 classic The Sandlot and, for some reason, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
Home Alone and Home Alone 2 were previously available to stream domestically, and were up for most of December, which is fitting as they are both Christmas movies. Home Alone 3 is still available as well, and it’s possible that the original and the first sequel will return to the platform at some point.
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Source: Collider