Over the weekend Disney held its sixth D23 Expo, an event where the company gets to showcase all its forthcoming news and announcements to both the media and the general public. In a surprising turn after dropping the official launch announcement less than a week ago for Disney+ the company has come charging out of the gates with more announcements for the streaming service as well as their future cinematic slate. We break down all the announcements from the weekend.
DISNEY+ STREAMING
Less than a week ago the studio announced that their foray into the streaming on demand world and would be launching on 12 November in the USA and Canada and the Netherlands, and the 19 November in Australia and New Zealand. Their first original title The Mandalorian created by Jon Favreau would be available on the platform from the drop. Along with a number of other titles.
The D23 Expo only served to drop even more streaming goodness into our laps. With three more Marvel based titles – Ms Marvel, She-Hulk and Moon Knight. These join the already previously announced The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Hawkeye and What If?. The three new titles are a little way off though and arrive after December 2021.
Star Wars fans are not being left out either with Ewan McGregor returning for an as yet to be titled Obi Wan Kenobi series along with the as yet to be titled Cassian Andor series with Diego Luna reprising his role from Rogue One. The final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars will also land in February of 2020.
In the realm of films on the streaming service, a live-action adaptation of one of their classic films Lady And The Tramp got a trailer, and it will be exclusive to the streaming service. The film will be a mixture of human cast and and real life pooches, with Tessa Thompson voicing Lady and Justin Theroux voicing Tramp. Anna Kendrick will star in Noelle alongside Bill Hader with its Christmas themes and also got a trailer.
For Pixar fans breakout star from Toy Story 4 Forky will also have a series titled Forky Asks A Question. And Monsters Inc will have its own spinoff with Monsters At Work.
In the live action side of things, Hilary Duff will be reprising her popular Lizzie McGuire character for a yet to be titled series, and The World According to Jeff Goldblum got a trailer to bring us more delightful Jeff Goldblum and Kristen Bell’s show Encore! drops a trailer where high school theatre kids reunite in their middle age to put one more show.
https://youtu.be/P7aN9OkNl7U
Finally Disney’s Chairman of Direct to Consumer Products Kevin Mayer confirmed that the streaming service would host the entire Pixar catalogue, all Disney Channel series and original movies, along with everything in the Disney vault to be available within the first year.
FILMS
The biggest drop is a special look trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker which will arrive in December of this year. It starts off with a retrospective across the previous cinematic releases and ends with some juicy footage of the forthcoming and final film in the Skywalker saga. There was also a poster drop, which definitively proves that Emperor Palpatine makes a comeback. And director J.J Abrams is sure to emotionally ruin us courtesy of Carrie Fisher’s final onscreen performance.
Marvel honcho Kevin Feige announced that Black Panther 2 (which may or may not have more words added to the title in the future) would arrive 6 May 2022 with Ryan Coogler reprising his seat in the director’s chair. The Eternals full cast lineup was announced, Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Kit Harington, Barry Keoghan, Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani, Salma Hayek, Lauren Ridloff, Brian Tyree Henry, Lia McHugh and Don Lee.
A trailer was released at the Expo for Black Widow but we’re yet to see it land publicly online but we do know that Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff gets in a fight with her “sister” and fellow Black Widow Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and get to meet Red Guardian (David Harbour) and seeing the baddie of the film Taskmaster.
Jungle Cruise with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt which brings the infamous Disney theme park ride into a movie setting and has some Pirates of the Carribbean vibes. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil sees Angelina Jolie don the crazy horns and goth look for the follow up film. It’s probably one of the more surprising sequel live action adaptations the studio is making since not many expected there to be an audience or desire, regardless the trailer looks pretty fantastic and magical. Arriving in May of 2021will be another live action adaptation with Cruella starring Emma Stone as the infamously wicked woman intent on collecting all the dalmations, directed by Craig Gillespie it will channel some 1970’s punk rock vibes.
Frozen 2 is obviously going to send kids in a spin when it arrives in November, and the cast came onstage to sing an as yet untitled song that’s sure to give “Let It Go” a run for its catchiness money. There will be two brand new titles from Pixar’s camp, the first, Onward featuring the voice cast of Tom Holland and Chris Pratt as two teenage brothers going out on an adventure to see if there’s any magic left in the world and slated for a March 2020 release. The second, Soul, which will traverse the real world and the cosmic world and feature the voices of Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey which will arrive in June of 2020. And releasing from the Disney Animated Studios camp will be Raya and the Last Dragon in November of 2020. The film features Awkwafina as Sisu the last dragon, and Cassie Steele as Raya.
That’s a huge slate of content coming out of Disney courtesy of their subsidiary studio houses and obviously some of these release dates may move around. Regardless though we’re going to be kept pretty well stocked with things to watch well into 2021 across both the cinema and home streaming.
