Disney had a big day of announcements today, which came on the heels of their confirmation that they’ve once again passed their own record for the fastest studio to reach the $4 billion mark this year, beating last year’s time of November 14th. This is largely thanks to billion-plus Marvel Studios grosser, Avengers: Age of Ultron from this past May, which just recently hit DVD and Blu-Ray, though Pixar offering, Inside Out was a big contributor as well, recently crossing the $800 million mark with its opening in China this week. The huge box office success of Cinderella and Marvel’s Ant-Man also brought in lots of cash for the House of Mouse, with big Fall tentpoles like Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur in November and LucasFilm’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens in December guaranteed to keep their box office fortunes flying high for the rest of the year.
With Disney enjoying so much success at present, the studio has taken the opportunity to outline their upcoming movie release plans through to 2020, which subsidiary, Marvel Studios also detailed today, along with announcing a sequel to Ant-Man for 2018. Disney reserved dates for a slew of mystery movies, some from their animation division, some from their live-action division, and some from Pixar, along with corroborating the Marvel Studios announcements. LucasFilm was left out of the outline, though that’s likely because most of LucasFilm’s current release docket for the Star Wars Universe is already public for this time period.
The bulk of news pertained to Pixar, with some long-awaited sequels finally getting release dates at long last. Cars 3 will officially serve as the studio’s main 2017 movie, releasing on June 16th, 2017, though this means that Toy Story 4 has been bumped into the following year. It’s now set for release on June 15th, 2018. The Incredibles 2 meanwhile now stands as Pixar’s 2019 offering, and is scheduled for June 21st, 2019. As with this year, certain years will also include two Pixar movies, rather than the studio’s usual lone offering. Cars 3 will be joined by another Pixar movie called COCO in 2017, which is scheduled for November 22nd, 2017, and two mystery Pixar movies have gotten dates for 2020, the first on March 13th, 2020, and the second on June 19th, 2020. Yet again, Disney is playing Box Office Chicken with a big rival on that date, since Warner Bros./DC Entertainment’s Green Lantern Corps. is also scheduled for June 19th, 2020.
Disney’s own in-house animation studio will be busy over the next few years as well! An animated adaptation of well-known fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk called ‘Gigantic‘ is now penciled in for March 9th, 2018. A new DisneyToon movie is also set for April 12th, 2019, and a mainline Disney animation movie has reserved a date for November 25th, 2020. Sadly, it doesn’t look like there’s any definitive word on when we can expect previously-confirmed sequels to hit movies like Wreck-It Ralph or Frozen, though one of these sequels may occupy the 2020 date.
Don’t think that Disney will be skimping on their recent wave of live-action remakes either! The studio has booked dates for unidentified ‘live-action fairy tale’ movies (which most likely correspond to their live-action remakes like Cinderella and next year’s The Jungle Book), which are planned for December 22nd, 2017, November 2nd, 2018 (taking the vacated date of the delayed Captain Marvel from Marvel Studios), March 29th, 2019, and November 8th, 2019. At least some of these dates probably belong to previously-confirmed animated Disney classics getting the live-action treatment, such as Mulan, Aladdin and The Sword in the Stone.
Keep drawing up Eggplante for all news and updates on Disney’s movie release plans.