Macaulay Culkin's ‘Home Alone’ Return Reportedly Gains Momentum as Disney Courts the Star

Macaulay Culkin‘s long-rumored return to Home Alone may be inching closer, with a new report suggesting Disney is eager to bring the star back for a proper legacy sequel. The claim comes from Matt Belloni of The Town podcast, who reported that Culkin was recently seen on the Disney lot and that the studio is keen to court him, though no deal has been formally announced.

Per Belloni’s report, Disney is said to be enthusiastic about making a Culkin-led sequel happen, with the studio reportedly viewing his pitch as a strong idea and eager to secure his involvement. Those characterizations come entirely from the podcast, and it is worth stressing that nothing has been confirmed by either the actor or the studio, leaving the project firmly in the rumor stage for now. Still, the report frames the momentum as more concrete than in previous years, positioning a return as a real possibility rather than idle speculation.

The pitch itself is not new. During his 2025 “A Nostalgic Night With Macaulay Culkin” tour, the actor laid out his vision for a third chapter in which a now-adult Kevin McCallister has become a neglectful father and finds himself locked out of his home by his young son. The premise would flip the original’s formula, casting Kevin in the intruder role once held by the Wet Bandits as he attempts to break back into the house, and metaphorically back into his child’s life, while dodging the traps his son has set. That inversion would leave little narrative room for the return of Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern’s burglars.

Culkin’s history with the series adds weight to the report’s appeal. The actor headlined 1990’s Home Alone and its 1992 follow-up Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, then stepped away from the franchise entirely. The property carried on without him across several installments, beginning with 1997’s Home Alone 3 and continuing through 2002’s Home Alone 4, 2012’s Home Alone: The Holiday Heist, and the 2021 reboot Home Sweet Home Alone, none of which recaptured the original’s cultural pull. A Culkin-led entry would mark his first involvement in more than three decades.

Any reunion would arrive under bittersweet circumstances, however. Chris Columbus, who directed the first two films, has voiced skepticism about revisiting the material, telling Entertainment Tonight in 2025 that he believes the original moment cannot be recaptured. The original cast has also been diminished by loss, with Catherine O’Hara, who played Kevin’s mother Kate McCallister, having passed away in January 2026, and John Heard, who played his father, having died in 2017. Those absences mean that even a successful revival could not fully reassemble the family that anchored the first two films.