If San Diego Comic-Con is a swirling maelstrom of chaotic mixed bag geekery, one minute Tom Hiddleston in full Loki costume regaling Hall H, the next Ryan Reynolds reciting the Green Lantern oath, Disney’s D23 is its more corporate, controlled cousin. No pesky fans asking awkward questions here (at least at the main studio panels), but plenty of super-smooth sneak peeks at movies and TV shows to come, all delivered up from the 7,000 capacity D23 hall at Anaheim Convention Centre with the sort of sparkling production and star power you’d expect from the studio that currently rules Hollywood.
Attendees for Friday afternoon’s panel for Disney and Pixar were warmed up for a packed two-hour panel with Cynthia Erivo, aka the blue fairy in the studio’s new live action take on Pinocchio, singing When You Wish Upon a Star. A couple of hours later, West Side Story Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose saw us out with a never-before-heard song from newly announced Disney Animation Studios film Wish, ‘More For Us’ (cue standing ovation).
In between were upfront, often exclusive looks at an almost overwhelming torrent of new movies and TV shows, from the underwhelming (Hocus Pocus 2, anyone?) to the intriguing (Pixar’s enticing Elemental) and the remarkable (Disney Animation’s Iwaju).
Amy Adams turned up to remind us all how unexpectedly wonderful 2007’s Enchanted was, a perfect Disney Live action piece that played on the animation classics Snow White and Sleeping Beauty without ever plundering them for easy thrills. Sequel Disenchanted will be out in November via Disney + and also brings back Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden and Idina Menzel, this time to take on Maya Rudolph’s mean ole Malvina Monroe, who seems to be more of a neighbourhood bully than an apple-poisoning type.
We also got a world-first look at the forthcoming Peter Pan and Wendy, which will star Alexander Molony and Ever Anderson as the title characters, with Jude Law as Captain Hook. Disney will be hoping the film does better than recent Hollywood efforts based on the JM Barrie children’s classic: casting the Bigstone Cree First Nation actor Alyssa Wapanatâhk as Tiger Lily ought to help avoid the kind of controversy attracted by Joe Wright’s 2014 film Pan, which unwisely made the decision to cast white actor Rooney Mara as the Native American princess.
The studio already looks to have another hit on its hands with Rob Marshall’s The Little Mermaid, if section featuring Halle Bailey as the new Ariel was anything to go by. Marshall is the director of the kind of big screen musicals beloved by those who don’t really like musicals, such as Chicago and Into the Woods. Underwater shots are a mesmerising feast for the peepers, Ariel’s hair swirling perfectly beneath the oceans, as the coral beneath her seems to shimmer with phosphorescence.
If Disney’s live action remake program is the easy money, Pixar is increasingly cementing its reputation for challenging, absorbing cinema that tugs at the heart-strings but also keeps the synapses whirling at the sheer depth of its imaginative thinking. It’s also the place where Disney finds its most personal films, and where animators seem to be given the most freedom to flex their creative muscles.
Chief creative officer Pete Docter was on stage to introduce an early look at the movie Elemental from director Pete Sohn (The Good Dinosaur). It exists in a typically high-concept Pixar world in which creatures from the four classics elements of earth, water, air and fire live together in a single metropolis, the notion an obvious metaphor for and love-letter to the unfettered diversity of America’s cities. Then there was the newly-announced Elio, a science fiction piece about an 11-year-old boy who accidentally becomes the Earth’s ambassador to an entire universe of alien civilisations in a sumptuously psychedelic version of the universe beyond our solar system. Starring America Ferrara alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Yonas Kibreab in the title role, it will be out in spring 2024.
The studio rounded off its panel by wheeling out Amy Poehler to announce that Inside Out 2 is going into production for a summer 2024 release. Poehler, who voiced Joy in the original, revealed the sequel will feature new emotions inside a now-teenaged Riley’s brain. What are the odds on Scorn joining Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust in the colourful control room this time out?
Docter had earlier announced Pixar’s first TV show, the ambitious Win or Lose, from writer-directors Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates. It’s ostensibly about a week in the life of a softball team, but will break ground by examining the same events from different characters’ viewpoints, and looks just perfect.
Pixar isn’t the only corner of Disney taking risks in 2024, however. A smiling Jennifer Lee, chief creative officer of Disney Animation Studio, took to the stage to reveal new details about the upcoming Disney+ series Iwaju, previously described as a “mash-up” between the Hollywood company and Africa’s Kugali studio. Director Ziki Nelson said the show, set in a divided future version of Lagos, would blend “Disney’s magic and animation expertise with Kugali’s fire and storytelling authenticity”, describing it as a “personal childhood dream of mine to tell my story and that of my people”.
Meanwhile the film Strange World, due in November 2022, will star Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid and Lucy Liu. As the three actors looked on, writer Qui Nguyen (Raya and the Last Dragon) described a hidden world full of weird monsters, shocks and obstacles.
Finally, Lee announced Wish, a film that will mark Disney’s 100th anniversary and features DeBose as a 17-year-old girl named Asha who literally makes a wish upon a star. The movie, which uses a watercolour-style look harking back to the studio’s early films, is also expected to feature a cavalcade of Disney Easter Eggs in celebration of the studio’s garlanded history. Lee revealed that Asha will go up against one of the studio’s most iconic villains, but the film’s central attraction is expected to be Star himself, a ball of cosmic energy who answers Asha’s prayer.
If Disney can inspire nostalgia for its own classics while breaking new ground with Wish, it will be following a path the studio has not always stayed true to with its current, seemingly endless program of live action remakes of classic animated fare. Nevertheless, it’s a journey into the creative cosmos that seems well worth exploring on the evidence of this hugely ambitious slate of upcoming fantasy spectacles.
