Disney is “salivating” over a Home Alone reboot with Macaulay Culkin
An entertainment account on X, crediting Puck’s Matt Belloni, says Culkin sat down with Disney and the studio is “salivating” over a reboot with him back in it. Treat it as a rumor for now. But Culkin’s been dangling his own sequel pitch for a while, and Disney’s last try without him flopped.
Kevin McCallister might be coming back. Maybe.
An X account that aggregates Hollywood scoops, crediting Puck‘s Matt Belloni, claims Macaulay Culkin has met with Disney about a new Home Alone, and that the studio is “salivating” over a reboot with him attached.
File it under rumor until someone official says otherwise. Disney hasn’t commented. Neither has Culkin.
But it’s a rumor with some ground under it, which is why it’s worth a look.
Culkin’s been asking for this
The thing is, Culkin already pitched his own version. Out loud. On a stage.
For years he stayed as far from Kevin as a person can get, which nobody blamed him for given how being the most famous child on earth went for him. Then last November, on his A Nostalgic Night with Macaulay Culkin tour, he cracked the door. He “wouldn’t be completely allergic” to another one, he said, though “it would have to be just right.”
And he had the pitch ready.
Grown-up Kevin. Widower or divorcee, he hasn’t decided. Working too hard, not paying enough attention, and his own kid is fed up with him. Then Kevin gets locked out of the house. The kid won’t let him in. The kid is the one setting the traps.
So it’s Home Alone with the roles flipped, and the guy who spent two movies gleefully torturing burglars is now the one eating the paint cans. That’s a real idea. Darker than a Christmas classic usually goes, but a real one, and it’s his.
Disney already tried this without him
Here’s why the studio would be “salivating,” if it is.
Disney owns Home Alone now, through the Fox deal, and it has kept the thing running long past the point of dignity. Home Alone 3. A made-for-TV 4. The Holiday Heist in 2012.
Different kid every time, none of them Culkin, none of them landing.
Then, in 2021, the big swing: Home Sweet Home Alone on Disney+, a full reboot with a new kid named Max. It arrived, people shrugged, and it vanished. Even Disney superfans forget it exists. The premise didn’t travel without the face that made it famous.
That’s the lesson the “salivating” makes sense against. Five sequels and reboots have proven the traps and the tinsel aren’t the draw. Culkin is. You can rebuild the McCallister staircase all you want; the magic was the kid at the top of it, and he’s the one piece Disney kept trying to replace and couldn’t.
The catch
Whether it happens is a different question.
Chris Columbus, who directed the first two and is the closest thing this franchise has to a soul, is not sold. He’s called the later sequels a mess in plain terms, and said the smarter move is to leave the original where it is.
“I think it’s a mistake to try to go back and recapture something we did 35 years ago,” he told ET. “I think it should be left alone.”
Culkin’s own bar — “it would have to be just right” — is doing a lot of work too. This is a man who walked away once and meant it. A meeting is not a deal, and “salivating” is a studio feeling, not a signature.
There’s also the small matter of Mickey’s Home Alone, the animated special Disney’s already got coming this holiday season, with Mickey and Pluto defending the house from a raccoon and a weasel. Disney can want a Culkin movie and still be perfectly happy selling you a mouse-shaped version of it in the meantime.
Kevin might really be coming home. Or a very well-sourced meeting might stay a meeting. For now it’s one screenshot, one “salivating,” and a 45-year-old man who’s already written the sequel in his head.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
X (Hollywood aggregator account, crediting Matt Belloni / Puck) — the claim that Culkin met with Disney and the studio is “salivating” over a reboot
Variety / People — Culkin’s November 2025 Nostalgic Night pitch, the “wouldn’t be completely allergic” and adult-Kevin-versus-his-son idea
The Hollywood Reporter — Chris Columbus on the “really bad sequels” and Culkin’s 35th-anniversary Academy Museum conversation
Entertainment Tonight (via NBC Chicago) — Columbus saying the original “should be left alone”
Deadline — Home Sweet Home Alone (2021) and the Mickey’s Home Alone 2026 holiday special
AOL / ScreenCrush — the franchise’s sequel-and-reboot history under Fox and Disney