Child star Macaulay Culkin, 45, pitched Disney his take on a Home Alone reboot, according to Puck’s Matt Belloni.
The reporter explained on his The Town podcast, “I got a tip the other day that there was a very interesting sighting on the Disney lot. Macaulay Culkin was there, and he’s talked about having an idea for a new Home Alone, and Disney is salivating.” Belloni added, “Macaulay Culkin is having his a-- kissed like nobody’s business.”
According to Belloni, Disney loved the actor’s idea so much that the company is willing to fund a “passion project” for the star if he were to reprise his role as Kevin McCallister.
“It’s a really good idea,” Belloni said, citing anonymous sources with knowledge. “If that happens and they restart the Home Alone franchise, that would be gigantic for the next 10 years ‘cause that movie, as you know, is perennially top of the streaming list from October through Christmas every year. It’s one of the biggest franchises.”
TMZ later confirmed Belloni’s report.
Culkin shared his idea for rebooting the franchise, which includes the 1990 original and its 1992 New York sequel, last November.
During a stop on his “A Nostalgic Night with Macaulay Culkin” tour, he told fans, “I kind of had this idea,” Culkin explained. “I’m either a widower or a divorcé. I’m raising a kid and all that stuff. I’m working really hard, and I’m not really paying enough attention, and the kid is kind of getting miffed at me, and then I get locked out. [Kevin’s son] won’t let me in… and he’s the one setting traps for me.”
The actor imagined that the cat-and-mouse game, which turns the tables on Kevin McCallister’s character after the 10-year-old outsmarted intruders in the first film, would ultimately have a deeper meaning.
“The house is some sort of metaphor for our relationship,” he explained, and Kevin, as a dad, would be trying to “get let back into son’s heart.” He added that he wasn’t “completely allergic” to reprising his role, if it was “the right thing.”
Fans may have been excited by Culkin’s idea, but Chris Columbus, the director of the first two films, told Entertainment Tonight last year that he doesn’t think any more sequels should be made. “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… 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.”
The Christmas films made Culkin one of the biggest child stars of the 1990s. The franchise consists of two more films after Culkin’s departure, which were never as well-received as the first.
Culkin has reprised his role as Kevin once before in 2018, when he starred in a Google ad for Google Assistant.
