I love Disney. I've always loved Disney. But sometimes, it's the ones you love the most that let you down the hardest. And that's exactly how I felt about its recent D23 fan event in Anaheim, California.
As you'd expect, the show itself was sprinkled with spectacle, pizzazz, and plenty of Disney magic. Bart Simpson opening proceedings. Stitch arriving on the big screen with his new pink co-star. Giant red balloons bouncing around the arena for a mass game of Keepy Uppy. Fantastic.
But D23 isn't just about feelgood vibes, it's mainly about announcing new projects. And the list of forthcoming films made me decidedly underwhelmed.
What's coming next
In the animation corner: Frozen 3. Incredibles 3. Coco 2. Zootopia 3. A sixth (yes, sixth!) big-screen outing for Ice Age. A second Simpsons movie. In the live action corner, meanwhile, we're getting a remake of Tangled, and a sequel to 2025's previous live-action remake Lilo & Stitch.
If you count up the films Disney and Pixar announced, only four are original: Pixar's Ghost Market and Gatto, and Disney Animation's Clay and Hexed. The rest is a company repurposing its past.
I've written before about why I think Disney's live action remakes are all wrong, but a live-action Tangled is really depressing. The 2010 original was already made with CG, so turning it into "live action" – which will doubtless be dominated by CG anyway – feels less a brave reinvention and more like a tweak of the 3D software.
Not to mention that when it arrives in March 2028, it'll be remaking a film that's barely 18 years old. One that very much hasn't aged, and anyone who's interested will have seen on Disney+ already.
What's depressing me most is that I can see the business reasons for what they're doing. The live-action Lilo & Stitch took over $1 billion at the box office in 2025, so a sequel is a slam dunk.
Original animated films are expensive and risky, as Pixar learned when Elio struggled at the box office last year. If I was a Disney investor, I'd be screaming "Make Frozen 3!" from the rooftops.
But over the long term, that just means Disney will end up eating itself. If you think about it, every franchise Disney is milking today was once a risky original. Where are the next risky originals coming from?
The good news
Admittedly, there is some new stuff on the way. Hexed, Disney Animation’s next film, is an original that hits cinemas in November. At D23, Disney announced two big additions to its voice cast: Jodie Foster as Queen Celeste and Walton Goggins as a character called Beef Roger Crummchuk. That name alone makes me want to buy a ticket .
Pixar, meanwhile, has Gatto, a Venice-set adventure from Enrico Casarosa, the director of Luca. The latter's sunny take on the Italian Riviera was charming; a shame it went straight to Disney+ in 2021. At least Casarosa is getting a proper cinema release this time, with Gatto due in March 2027.
Further out, there’s Ghost Market, a totally original Pixar film due in March 2028, and Disney Animation’s Clay, also set for 2028. Disney's said very little about either, and Clay is only a working title. But I'm still eager to learn more.
Finally, there's The Bluey Movie, and while that's based on a well-known character, a jump from TV to the big screen can often lead to great things: just look at Aardman. The irony? Disney didn’t make it: they're only distributing it.
Yes, one of the most exciting projects at Disney’s event was an idea someone else had, and which somebody else is making. In the meantime, I'm putting my trust in Laika to bring some child-friendly movie magic back to our cinemas.
