Disney Investor Day: Information Overload

The House of Mouse dropped a ridiculous amount of news at their The Walt Disney Company Investor Day 2020 this last week. A tweetstorm of announcement after announcement came from the official accounts from Disney, Marvel Studios and Pixar. The juggernaut has promised consumers an overwhelming amount of new content over the next 5 years on their proprietary streaming platform, Disney+. We can all place bets that the basic Disney+ package will increase significantly for 2021.

Under the Disney banner, some of the highlights included:

• More mature content for teens and adults under the subheading, STAR
• 9 new live-action and animated films, including Sister Act 3, Cruella and The Jungle Cruise
• 7 new animated series including Tiana, Encanto and Iwájú
• 5 live-action series including Cheaper by the Dozen and Night at the Museum

The hits just kept coming with senior executives giving enough content to make even the hardened Disney fan excited.

Under the Pixar group, the highlights included the upcoming Soul, dropping exclusively on Disney+ Christmas day and Lightyear coming in 2022 and voiced by MCU alum Chris Evans.

Marvel Studios has possibly the most ambitious scheduling of all of the Disney brands. With 6 streaming series débuting in the next year, the MCU is poised to become an even larger behemoth than it is currently. Coming in 2021 on Disney+ will be:

• WandaVision, starring Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bettany
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, starting Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan
• Loki, starring Tom Hiddleston
• What If, animated anthology based on Marvel comics, exploring what happens if things were different in the MCU
• Ms. Marvel, starring Iman Vellani
• Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner, Florence Pugh, Hailee Steinfeld and Vera Farmiga

Marvel Studio’s phase 4 of the MCU is equally as aspiring on the film side. With Black Widow pushed back to 2021, the studio has 4 movies crammed into the year, including the third Spider-Man. In both sad and happy news, Disney announced the sequel to Black Panther will not recast the iconic role of T’Challa, ensuring the late Chadwick Boseman’s memory cemented as the character.

The second reboot of Fantastic 4 was also put into place for 2023, showing that you can take a fledgling franchise and make 3 different versions of it.

Theydies and gentlepeople, we haven’t even gotten to the Star Wars brand (*sigh*).

With the popularity of The Mandalorian, Star Wars has tapped into the ‘we-don’t-watch-Star-Wars-because-it’s-too-long-but-this-is-cool-since-it’s-only-40-minutes’ group (of which I’m a card carrying memeber). A direct spinoff from the previously mentioned, Ahsoka will star Rosario Dawson, reprising her guest turn in The Mandalorian. Other high points included:

• Lando. Unknown if Billy Dee Williams or Donald Glover are attached and if this is live-action or animated
• Obi-Wan Kenobi, starring Ewan McGregor in the titular role and Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader

The 3-hour plus announcement created a flurry of interest across all social media platforms. With production studios like Pixar showcasing some of their feature films on Disney+, Warner-Brothers decided to premiere its entire 2021 slate on HBO Max. It remains to be seen if other studios will jump on the bandwagon in the midst of the pandemic, with movie theaters shuttered and in danger of complete closure.

All in all, good or bad, Disney is gobbling up the competition and it’s showing in all of its entities now and in the near future.

You can stream the entire Disney Investor Day 2020 announcement on TheWaltDisneyCompany.com