Disney announces Home Alone reboot

A Home Alone reboot is in the works. Seriously.

Disney chairman Bob Iger has announced the 1990 movie will be “reimagined” for “a new generation” along with other classic films including Night At the Museum, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Cheaper By the Dozen, Deadline reported.

Details are scarce and it’s not yet known if the Home Alone reboot will be a movie or a TV show or if any of the original stars are set to return.

The reboot will eventually be available on the Disney+ streaming service that launches in the US on November 12. The streaming service won’t be available Down Under until about 2021, according to GQ Australia.

To celebrate this terribly exciting news, we’ve compiled a list of things you never knew about Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which are both available to stream on Foxtel.

Buzz, your girlfriend, WOOF: The photo of the unfortunate looking girl isn’t a girl at all. The director, Chris Columbus, thought it would be too cruel for an actual female actor to be forever known as the “ugly” girl, so instead he got the art director’s son to dress up.

The talkboy: In Home Alone 2, Kevin was obsessed with his talkboy toy, a cassette player that recorded and replayed audio. The item was created by the props department, but after the film’s release, there was such a demand for the product that Tiger Electronics actually manufactured them for sale.

That scream: Daniel Stern agreed to have the tarantula placed on his face for one scene and one scene only. But he had to mime that piercing scream as the creepy crawly walked over his face because if he yelled that loudly during the actual take it would have scared the spider.

Michael Jackson visited the set of Home Alone: “He seemed like he wanted to talk to me and open up,” Devin Ratray, who played Buzz, told news.com.au. “He really did feel comfortable around Macaulay (Culkin) and I, more than anyone else. He felt guarded and uncomfortable around adults. I think that’s why he gravitated towards Macaulay because he felt like he could trust a child more than he could trust adults who had a secondary motive.”

Marathon Improv: John Candy, who played Gus Polinski, filmed all of his scenes in a marathon 23-hour session. Gus offers Kevin’s desperately worried mum, Kate McCallister, a ride home to reunite her with her son, chattering the whole way. Candy improvised almost all of his dialogue, and actor Catherine O’Hara (Kate) later admitted most of what they shot was unusable.

“(Writer/producer) John Hughes would start a bit and Candy would pick up on it, and we would just go with it. It was all in the moment. We’d start a ridiculous conversation and go as far as we could. Chris (Columbus) told me later how we couldn’t use most of it. He laughed and said, ‘You’re supposed to be looking for your kid, and you’re just having a good time with these guys in a truck’.”

Elvis, is that you?: There’s a popular fan theory that the King of Rock and Roll was not only alive in 1990 when Home Alone was filmed, but he appeared as an extra in the film.

Director Christopher Columbus shot down the theory, saying, “Look at this guy, he’s not Elvis Presley!”

Premiering on Foxtel Movies this month, catch Oscar award-winning films A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody. Get it now