Disney's Tangled remains a modern animated classic—its floating lanterns, catchy tunes, and charming leads have kept audiences spellbound since 2010. So when news of a live-action reboot surfaced, fans were both excited and wary. But for director Nathan Greno, the bigger conversation isn't just about whether Rapunzel's story can translate to live-action—it's about whether Hollywood is leaving enough room for fresh ideas.
In an exclusive interview with Collider while promoting his new Netflix animated film Swapped, Greno opened up about the reboot announcement and his feelings on the industry's current obsession with revisiting old IP. He admitted he's not against sequels or reboots—after all, he grew up eagerly awaiting Star Wars and Back to the Future installments. But he noted that those franchise entries once coexisted with a vibrant landscape of original stories. Now, he worries that nostalgia has become the default.
“What I get most excited about these days is original content,” Greno said. “The fact that we can put something out into the new IP, out into the world. I think that’s where it’s at. It’s great, you know, make the reboots and do all the sequels, which I can’t apparently stop [them] from doing. But to me, I think, like, hey, we have this opportunity to, like, let’s make something new and exciting and let’s put something original out there. That’s what truly, I think, inspires people, and that’s where new stories come from beyond that.”
His perspective carries weight, given that Tangled itself became a beloved piece of Disney's modern legacy. The film starred Mandy Moore as Rapunzel, Zachary Levi as Flynn Rider, and a supporting cast including Donna Murphy, Ron Perlman, and Jeffrey Tambor. It also gave us “I See the Light,” a song that still makes audiences tear up. For Greno, the emotional core of that film—a character trapped in a bubble discovering a wider world—is something he's revisited in his own work.
His new project, Swapped, is a body-swap comedy that feels deeply personal. Greno drew from his own upbringing in a small Wisconsin factory town, where his protective father urged him to stay close to home. “There’s so much of this movie just is me telling my own story of, like, starting in a small town in Wisconsin,” he explained. “My father, I love my father, he’s passed away, but he was always being protective and saying, you know, basically, you can’t leave this island. It was a factory town, and it’s like, get a job at the factory like we all do in this town. And so, going out in the world and realizing, wait a second, I don’t have the full picture here at all.”
That desire to tell something personal is why Greno remains so energized by original filmmaking. He sees Swapped as emotionally parallel to Tangled—both follow characters trapped in a limited worldview who eventually break free. “They still are a character within a bubble that doesn’t know what they don’t know. And that is my story,” he said. “And I think you can put enough sort of elements, enough frosting on that cake, that it’s gonna feel different. But it’s an emotional story that I know very deeply.”
Greno's comments arrive amid a wave of live-action Disney remakes, from The Little Mermaid to Snow White. While fans eagerly await news on the Tangled reboot, Greno's plea for more original content resonates. It's a reminder that even as Hollywood mines its past, the most exciting stories might still be the ones we haven't heard yet.
Swapped premieres on Netflix on May 1. Tangled is streaming now on Disney+. For more on the reboot debate, check out our coverage of Bonnie Wright's take on the Harry Potter HBO reboot and Once Upon a Time stars on their own reboot.
