I DIDN’T begrudge Tim Burton his preoccupation as he sat across the small hotel table. Our conversation was in San Diego several years back, while a Pond away, the editing of “Alice in Wonderland” awaited him like a clamoring child. His mind had only temporarily emerged from that rabbit hole, down which he’d soon again disappear.  But what happens when your career threatens to creatively vanish for interminable stretches down that deep Disney tunnel?  Burton’s “Alice” would go on to gross a billion dollars worldwide, of course, securing Disney’s corporate appetite for the 2016 “Through the Looking Glass” sequel that Burton will produce. And Burton followed “Alice” by directing “Dark Shadows,” a big-screen adaptation of the ’60s vampire show that ran on ABC — a network owned, of course, by Disney. And the filmmaker followed that with the Oscar-nominated “Frankenweenie” — a feature-length version of the animated short he’d made three decades earlier while working at…yes, Disney.  So it was a creative relief when Burton announced that he finally was working on fresh material again: 2014′s “Big Eyes,” which this year garnered Amy Adams a Golden Globe. But this month prompted a big skeptical eye: It was announced that Burton will disappear once more into the dusty Disney breach, to adapt its animated classic “Dumbo.”  From big eyes to big ears, I was initially reluctant to board this train of potential creative laziness. Why would a talent like Burton so easily return to Uncle Walt’s massive vault?  But then “Cinderella’s” coming-out topped the domestic box office this past weekend with a $67.9-million take, and has already grossed $130-million worldwide on a “mere” $95-million production budget. This positions “Cinderella” as a “cut-rate” “Maleficent,” which last year opened a tick under $70-million domestically — and went on to gross more than three-quarters of a billion globally.  And so I was reminded: Based on multigenerational audience response, Disney is only going to continue its recent string of live-action adaptations. Which means that “Dumbo” was almost certainly going to get remade, with or without Burton aboard the circus train.  So why should Burton surrender the glass slipper of being filmmaker royalty within the Magic Kingdom? Disney, after all, gave him his first job out of college, as the Burbank-born Cal Arts alum got hired on as an animator — before he struck gold with “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.” The House of Mouse is the home he’ll surely keep returning to, and where he still can crackle with imagination and innovation if the stars and script align. (It’s worth noting, too: Burton is such a devout student of the studio, his “Corpse Bride” even nodded to that 1929 Silly Symphonie classic of an early Disney animation, “The Skeleton Dance.”)  The reality is, Disney is already setting the agenda and the slate. Just as surely as the company is masterminding an army of Star Wars projects big and less-big, and an assemblage of Marvel titles clear through decade’s end, Disney has launched “Beauty and the Beast” (just-announced release date: two years from tomorrow) and “Jungle Book” live-action adaptations, too — on the heels of recent “Oz” and “Snow White” successes.  Burton will continue to pop back up for newer material, like “Peregrine’s Home for Peculiars,” based on the recent hit book series, with Eva Green (“Dark Shadows”) in the title role. But commercially, Disney is where the biggest vault is — which effectively also makes the studio one of the world’s biggest cinematic banks.  When you’re still a clown prince of darkness and quirkiness in the court of Disney, why surrender the royal seat?  Writer/artist/visual storyteller Michael Cavna is creator of the "Comic Riffs" column and graphic-novel reviewer for The Post's Book World. He relishes sharp-eyed satire in most any form.
As "Cinderella" tops box office, Tim Burton has signed on for another Disney live-action adaptation, "Dumbo." Creatively, is this a good thing?