The animated film "Mulan" was created in 1998 and remade in live-action by Niki Caro in 2020. However, at the time, it was released on Disney Plus which is a new Disney streaming service rental platform due to the Corona pandemic which prevented it from being released in theaters (Alexander, 2020).
Initially, audiences had to pay about $30 to watch "Mulan", in addition to a $7 subscription fee for Disney Plus. While this is a high price to pay to watch on a streaming platform compared to other content, Disney reported a 68% increase in Disney+ downloads after the release of "Mulan". Surprisingly, Mulan earned a total of $35.5 million from Disney+ subscribers after one week of its opening weekend (McGuire, 2020).
For the casting, Disney searched the world for a Chinese woman who has martial skills, English language skills, and star quality, and recruited Chinese-American Liu Yifei to play Mulan. The rest of the cast is also made up of Chinese celebrities, to have authentic cultural representation and make it more realistic with the purpose of attracting Chinese audiences (Jiang, 2020). However, compared to the original animated feature, "Mulan" differs significantly in plot line and characters. For example, in the live-action movie, while new characters have been added, the dragon Mushu and other characters from the animated version do not appear, and the musical elements are gone (Jiang, 2020). Additionally, although the original is a family-friendly film for all ages; the 2020 version has a PG-13 rating because the action version is more violent, so it's necessary for children under 13 to be guided by their parents (Charles, 2020).