It irritates me for the same reason that the remade version of Mulan exists, as well as The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pinnochio, and a few others exists...

Disney movies, the originals, really are timeless classics. They stand on their own and are self-fulfilling to where a live-action remake is blemishing, let alone merely unnecessary. Some of Disney remakes were exceptional to this and I saw their remakes somewhat justifiable, like Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella. But I think perhaps I favor it because I saw it at a time before Disney started to, like a distillery, just started grinding out remake after remake. It was also seen at a time when Disney still had some credit in my eyes as a storytelling innovator (the company that is) before it became the monopolistic empire that it is today. But with the likes of The Lion King and Aladdin, these movies are not even half a century old, and they're really just too great to be sullied by a premature remake. Many of these films defined the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s.

I am open though, to some live-action remakes that I believe the originals were somewhat unfulfilling or underrated, like Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

By choosing a black actress, it's just another episode of tokenism; you can tell by now that when they start doing this and keep doing it, it's pretty phony. Kinda like how Disney "diversified" Star Wars, I could already tell before even seeing them that diversity, the need to hire "minority" actors, was at the forefront, and talent came second...or somewhere close to second.