Snow White, Mufasa, Toy Story 5, Incredibles 3 and Marvel: All the big moments from Disney’s D23 showcase

Disney had the home ground advantage. In a packed sports stadium, 12,000 diehard fans screamed with approval as the Mickey Mouse studio made announcements, revealed sneak peeks and brought out famous faces onto the stage.

The standing ovations were bigger for the behind-the-scenes bigwigs including Disney boss Bob Iger, Pixar’s main man Pete Docter, Star Wars whisperer Dave Filoni and Frozen director Jennifer Lee than they were for the celebrities including Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Jamie Lee Curtis.

That’s how you know everyone in the room is very serious about Disney.

The three-hour entertainment showcase was the first night of D23, a bi-annual fan convention held in Anaheim, California, a stone’s throw from Disneyland.

While surprise announcements were few, there were plenty of teases, first looks at trailers and footage and breadcrumbs about what’s to come, and reaffirmation that Disney is leaning heavily into sequels, spin-offs and franchises with few original stories.

PIXAR

Pixar were the ones who really came to play.

Riding on a wave of success with Inside Out 2 now the highest-grossing animated film of all time, Docter revealed the studio was already in production on Dream Productions, a streaming spin-off series that takes place inside Riley’s mind.

In the most recent film, the characters took a detour to where Riley’s dreams are made, and the new series will tell stories of those productions in the vein of a 30 Rock or Larry Sanders Show. It’s set between the first and second movies.

Docter gave more details on the teased Toy Story 5 movie, including that it will be directed by Andrew Stanton, a long-time Pixar creative who has worked on the scripts for all four previous films and directed WALL-E and Finding Nemo.

The story will see Woody, Buzz and company contend with their fiercest rivals yet: technology. How do they stay relevant in the face of screen obsessions?

Stanton told the crowd, “In all of the Toy Story films, above all, the job of the toys has been to be there for their kids. And with Toy Story 5, the toys’ jobs get exponentially harder when our toy crew goes head-to-head with what kids are obsessed with today: electronics.

“This time around, it’s toys versus technology.”

There’s also a new movie coming called Hoppers, in which a human named Mabel has her mind transported into the mind of a robot beaver. Voice talents for that include Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan and Jon Hamm.

The biggest reveal was light on details, which is that there is an Incredibles 3 movie coming, which is being developed by Brad Bird who wrote and directed the first two films.

Also on the original stories front, Pixar showed footage from upcoming feature film Elio, about a young boy who is mistaken for Earth’s representative when he accidentally ventures into space, and Win or Lose, a series about a school sports team.

MOVIES

While there were no surprise announcements of any new films, Disney previewed its upcoming slate with first looks.

There was a new trailer from Mufasa: The Lion King, which is the prequel story of Simba’s father and how he and Scar fell out. Director Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) came out on stage with his cast and previewed more of the film which will be released in December.

Jenkins was also joined by Lin-Manuel Miranda who had composed new songs for the movie and gave the crowd a preview of one, “I Always Wanted a Brother”. The clip was not released online but the trailer was.

The night opened with a live performance of a new song from the upcoming Moana 2, which had originally been made as a streaming series but was then recut for a cinema release. The voice of Moana, Auli’I Cravalho sang “We’re Back” before she and Dwayne Johnson introduced a new trailer.

The story involves an ancient curse as well as the addition of a new little sister.

Ginnifer Goodwin, the voice of the tireless bunny Judy Hops in Zootopia, was on hand to tease the upcoming sequel and introduce a clip which was not released online. Goodwin also revealed Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once) will voice a new character called Gary, a snake.

Frozen’s creative force Jennifer Lee showed some early concept art for Frozen 3, which showed Elsa and Anna both on horseback and looking towards a whispy palace on the horizon while the shadow of a horned figure tracks them.

Lee also teased, again, the possibility of a fourth Frozen film without outright confirming there was one. She said that the second film opened up a lot of questions and that it “will take two films to answer them”.

While many were hoping for a more comprehensive look at the live-action Lilo and Stitch movie which had wrapped filming last year, there was only a tease of the CGI version of Stitch.

The upcoming Tron Ares film brought out its cast including Jeff Bridges who was in the original 1982 movie. The first footage gave the audience glimpses of Jared Leto as Ares, a digital program who is in the real world. Disney announced Nine Inch Nails would score the film.

James Cameron revealed the title of the third Avatar movie will be Fire and Ash.

And in one of the bigger fan service moments of the evening, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan came out onstage to promote the long-desired Freaky Friday sequel, which will be called Freakier Friday.

Curtis said, “For me, it feels like no time has passed. We love these characters, we love each other, we love you and you love us in the movie, and the story and what it means to you.”

Some images flashed up on screen of the pair on set and Curtis promised, “It’s more fun, it’s more emotional and it’s all for you guys. The only reason we are back here doing this is because of your love”.

Finally, the Snow White presentation gave the stadium a look at a full clip of Rachel Zegler singing “Whistle While You Work” before launching the first trailer of the live-action remake which is due for release in March.

MARVEL STUDIOS

Marvel had rolled out most of its big guns at San Diego Comic-Con only two weeks earlier, but it showed the audience the two videos that had been played at SDCC, and which has not yet been posted online — one for the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World and another for Fantastic Four: First Steps.

The Captain America footage teased the discovery of Adamantium (the metal which Wolverine is made of) as well as Thunderbolt Ross (Harrison Ford) transforming into Red Hulk.

The Fantastic Four video is a little hype reel of the film starring Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joe Quinn as the superheroes, which can now be incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019. Fox previously held the onscreen rights to the characters.

What Marvel did bring to D23 were exclusive trailers for three upcoming streaming series: Agatha All Along, Ironheart and Daredevil: Born Again.

Agatha All Along is a spin-off series from WandaVision and is focused on Agatha Harkness. The cast including Kathryn Hahn, Patti LuPone and Aubrey Plaza took to the stage with a performance of the series’ original song, “Witches Road”, while Hahn closed it out with a theatrical cackle.

The trailer for the show, which is due next month, was later released online by Marvel.

However, the Ironheart and Daredevil videos were screened for the room only.

Ironheart features Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, a character that was introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, who is a super-smart university student and inventor who could be the successor to Tony Stark. Producer Ryan Coogler, and the cast including Thorne, Anthony Ramos and Alden Ehrenreich were on stage to hype up the series.

Finally, there was Daredevil: Born Again, which reunites the cast of the Daredevil streaming series that was on Netflix and is, so far, the only series of the Marvel Netflix era (which also included Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage) that has been revived by Marvel Studios.

Marvel boss Kevin Feige said, “Since the earliest conversations about television, there is a show that everybody has been asking us for and that show is Daredevil. Now in Daredevil: Born Again, we’ve channelled the essence of the original series, but set an entire new path for Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk.”

Cast members Charlie Cox, Elden Henson, Deborah Ann Woll, Vincent D’Onofrio and Jon Bernthal all came out on stage and introduced the first-look trailer, which has a grittier and more violent tone than most of the MCU. They also revealed the previously greenlit second season would soon begin filming.

Daredevil: Born Again is due for release in March.

STAR WARS

The Star Wars portion of the night was light, with a first trailer for Skeleton Crew, an upcoming streaming series from Jon Watts (Spider-Man: No Way Home) and Christopher Ford, starring Jude Law and a young cast.

Law described the show as a “timeless adventure story in the spirit of Amblin coming-of-age films from the 80s like Goonies and E.T.”

The show, which released its trailer online last night, tells the story of four kids who accidentally blast off into space and have to find their way back home.

Law added, “I fell in love with Star Wars when I was a 10-year-old boy and what I loved most about this series is that it is told through the perspective of the kids as they explore curious and dangerous world beyond their own, unsure how and who they can trust.”

Diego Luna also came out to hype up the next season of Andor, in which he plays Cassian Andor.

The centrepiece was footage from Star Wars’ first feature film since the 2019 release of The Rise of Skywalker, which had a mixed reception.

Mandalorian and Grogu only started filming two weeks ago but director Jon Favreau and producer and co-writer Dave Filoni brought along some reels to tease the further adventures of the two characters on the big screen.

In a voiceover, Mando says, “We’re bounty hunters by trade, now that he’s with me, I’ll be selective about my assignments”.

The video, which was not released to the public, featured snowscapes, AT-AT bots, Babu Frick and the character Zeb, a character that was previously on the animated series Star Wars: Rebels.

STAGE PRODUCTIONS

The crowd was treated to a medley of performances from the Broadway casts of Aladdin, The Lion King and Frozen but it was the announcement of two new shows in development that had the crowd most excited.

The first was a musical version of Hercules and the second was The Greatest Showman. The latter was the Hugh Jackman-starring, crowd-pleasing film that had been made by 20th Century Fox and told the highly fictionalised story of P.T. Barnum.

Wenlei Ma travelled to Los Angeles as a guest of Disney