Cartoon eyes and to a lesser extent mouths did a lot to display emotion. We are too caught up in making things photorealistic that we miss out on these things.
Aside from the superb storytelling and all that, it makes the team push for new breakthrough in animation.
I can see Lion King serving as a real world project for Disney animators in the same way, and a way to get paid to learn and push the fold in realistic animation. Not saying that's the reason behind it as I'm sure remaking a bunch of these movies was likely planned already but if you can level up your team, learn something new in the process, and get paid for doing it, why not.
Remember. Disney is a theme-park & toy company that does movies as commercials/branding. But the first two businesses are critically dependent on retaining all the IP rights for the movies in perpetuity.
Much of the same applies to Lumeire.
Of course not every remake has sparked the same level of outrage, and it’s not always directed at the CGI. Aladdin took flak because they replaced Robin Williams’ Genie with Will Smith, and he wasn’t expected to be as good.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_live-action_r...
> On July 16, 2019, it was reported that a live-action remake of The Black Cauldron is in early stages of development.
The Little Mermaid will feature photorealistic sea creatures, but we don't know how they'll turn out yet. Christopher Robin's Winnie the Pooh was photorealistic and looked creepy. The slightly less recent Beauty and the Beast had a bad looking Beast. The Jungle Book remake had a god-awful Baloo.
Disney's track record is not good with these remakes.
Aladdin took flak entirely because the CGI genie they released in the teaser trailer looked so bad.
I don't recall much reaction to Will Smith's performance, pro or con.
Of course the Disney artists know that, but that decision was likely well above their paygrade.