In the increasingly corporate world of entertainment, quarterly earnings calls are now the place to make big announcements to excite shareholders. Disney held their latest call yesterday, and as you probably already know, Moana 2 was the big surprise reveal. Well, there was a lot more that CEO Bob Iger had up his sleeve, so let’s just get to it.
First of all, Iger confirmed that Lucasfilm’s next Star Wars theatrical movie would be The Mandalorian and Grogu and it’ll arrive in 2026. Right now there are two opens dates on May 22nd and December 18th, so expect it to land on one of those.
Zootopia 2 was also confirmed to arrive in 2025, with no hard date set. Screenwriter Jared Bush is coming back to work on the film, joined by co-director Josie Trinidad. Expect to hear the voices of Ginnifer Goodwin as officer Judy Hopps and Jason Bateman as Nick Wilde. The Zootopia franchise kicked off in 2016 with the first movie earning over $1B worldwide and launching an animated series on Disney+. Right now, there’s a November 26th 2025 date that’s open where the film could land.
Disney continued to lean-in on sequels by revealing that Frozen 3 and Toy Story 5 would hit theaters in 2026. These are two of Disney’s longest-running franchises at this point, but they approach their audiences differently. The Toy Story films get more mature to reflect that the kids who loved them in the beginning are now adults. Frozen did that a little bit with its sequel, which I think was superior to the original, by the way, but it remains to be seen if that continues with this third (and final?) chapter. As for open dates, we could see Frozen 3 land on November 25th 2026, with Toy Story 5 on June 19th 2026. I suppose those could swap or perhaps could pushed to a later date, but we’ll just have to see how things progress.
The worst kept secret ever was confirmed as Fede Alvarez’s upcoming Aliens movie is officially titled Alien: Romulus. No release date for that one yet.
And for you Swifties out there, Disney+ will be the exclusive home of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version), premiering on March 15th 2024. The streaming film will include five bonus songs from Swift’s 2020 album, Folklore. Haters gonna hate hate hate, but Taylor Swift will keep making that money.
