Disney News

Category: Movies & TV

  • Disney Announces ‘The Lion King 2’ in the Works Without Jon Favreau

    Disney Announces ‘The Lion King 2’ in the Works Without Jon Favreau

    A sequel to 2019’s photorealistic version of The Lion King is in the works, and Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Barry Jenkins is set to direct.

    Details are scarce but the film is rumoured to delve deeper into the mythology of the characters including Mufasa’s origin story, continuing the story first brought to the screen in the 1994 animated adventure.

    Jenkins took to twitter to confirm the news as you can see in the post below:

    “Helping my sister raise two young boys during the 90s, I grew up with these characters,” Jenkins said in a later statement. “Having the opportunity to work with Disney on expanding this magnificent tale of friendship, love and legacy while furthering my work chronicling the lives and souls of folk within the African diaspora is a dream come true.”

    The film will continue with the photo-realistic technology that director Jon Favreau used in the 2019 film and 2016’s The Jungle Book. There is no release date set for The Lion King follow-up or for the production start, but it is understandably a top priority for Sean Bailey’s division after the last film grossed $1.6 billion worldwide.

  • Yara Shahidi Cast as Tinkerbell in New Live-action ‘Peter Pan’ Movie

    Yara Shahidi Cast as Tinkerbell in New Live-action ‘Peter Pan’ Movie

    Disney reportedly cast “Grown-ish” star Yara Shahidi to play Tinker Bell in its upcoming live-action adaptation of “Peter Pan.”

    Shahidi will be the first woman of colour to take on the iconic role of the character, previously assumed by Julia Roberts in 1991’s Hook and Ludivine Sagnier in 2003’s Peter Pan.

    The 20-year-old actress seemingly confirmed the news on Instagram Friday, sharing a picture of Tinker Bell drawn as a Black woman as you can see in th post below:

    “Thank you for all of the love. It, truly, means so much to me,” she wrote in the caption. “I’m excited for this next adventure!”

    She also shared a photo of herself dressed in green and wrote, “lettssssgooooo #Tinkerbell.”

    Shahidi is best known for her starring role on ABC’s “Black-ish,” as well as being a star and producer of Freeform’s “Grown-ish.” The actor and activist recently signed an overall deal with ABC Studios. On the film side, Shahidi recently led the YA drama “The Sun Is Also a Star.”

    Alexander Molony and Ever Anderson are set to take flight with Shahidi’s Tinker Bell as the two titular children in Peter Pan and Wendy, while Jude Law has been tapped to play Captain Hook in the upcoming movie, which will be directed by David Lowery and produced by Jim Whitaker from a script co-written by Lowery and Toby Halbrooks.

  • BREAKING: First ‘The Mandalorian’ Trailer for Season 2 Released by Disney

    BREAKING: First ‘The Mandalorian’ Trailer for Season 2 Released by Disney

    Disney has debuted the first trailer for The Mandalorian’s second season after recently announcing the show will return on October 30th.

    The two-minute trailer takes viewers to a galaxy far, far away as the bounty hunter known as the Mandalorian and his little green friend nicknamed Baby Yoda, fight their way through the wretched hive of scum and villainy in the Star Wars universe.

    “Wherever I go, he goes,” the Mandalorian, who is played by Pedro Pascal, can be heard saying in the trailer as you can see below:

    Disney made sure the trailer showcased everything that fans and Disney+ subscribers loved about the show’s first season. There were blaster gun battles, rusty spaceships, remnants of the evil Empire, and, of course, Baby Yoda being, well, cute.

    The series, which launched Disney’s streaming efforts last November, was an instant success. The show was well-reviewed, dominated social chatter online, and even overshadowed the much-maligned “Star Wars” film, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” which opened last December.

  • ‘Doogie Howser, MD’ Getting Female-Led Reboot on Disney+

    ‘Doogie Howser, MD’ Getting Female-Led Reboot on Disney+

    A female-led reboot of the popular ‘90s series Doogie Howser M.D. has been picked up by Disney Plus.

    Disney+ has green-lit Doogie Kameāloha, M.D., the working title for a reboot of the popular ABC series Doogie Howser, which aired for four seasons between 1989 and 1993 and starred a fresh-faced Neil Patrick Harris as the titular teen doctor.

    The 10-episode half-hour comedy follows Kameāloha as she juggles a budding medical career and life as a teenager. Guiding Lahela (and also complicating things) is her family, including her spit-fire Irish mother who’s also her supervisor at the hospital, and her Hawaiian “Local Boy” father struggling to accept that his daughter is no longer his little girl.

    “Thirty years ago, a young medical prodigy took the world by storm and left a lasting impact on pop culture,” Ricky Strauss (president of content and marketing at Disney+) said in a statement. “Kourtney and the team at 20th Television have created a very modern take on this beloved property which will resonate with our global Disney+ audience. We can’t wait to introduce the world to the new Doogie!”

  • Olaf Returns in New Disney Short and Educational Videos for Kids

    Olaf Returns in New Disney Short and Educational Videos for Kids

    Tuesday, on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Josh Gad, who voices adorable snowman Olaf in Disney’s “Frozen” franchise announced a new animated short and Olaf-led educational videos.

    The short called “Once Upon a Snowman,” follows Olaf and his untold origins after being created by Elsa and searching for his identity. It will premiere exclusively on Disney+ on Oct. 23.

    “This is an idea that started to form when I was an animator on the first Frozen,” “Once Upon a Snowman” co-director Trent Correy said in a statement. ”Dan Abraham and I are so grateful and excited to have had the opportunity to direct this short, working with our incredible colleagues at Walt Disney Animation Studios.” Take a look at the clip below:

    The fun doesn’t stop there! Olaf is also helping kids (and parents) with the challenges of remote learning, Gad announced. Disney is introducing “Olaf’s Learning Adventures,” a series of fun and educational tutoring videos led by Olaf, in topics ranging from science to grammar to math.

  • Metallica Re-Writing ‘Nothing Else Matters’ for Disney film ‘Jungle Cruise’

    Metallica Re-Writing ‘Nothing Else Matters’ for Disney film ‘Jungle Cruise’

    Disney has enlisted iconic heavy metal band Metallica to create an orchestral version of “Nothing Else Matters” for their upcoming film “Jungle Cruise.”

    Speaking in a new interview with Collider, the band’s drummer Lars Ulrich revealed that they have rewritten their 1991 hit with Oscar nominated composer James Newton Howard for the new film, starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Emily Blunt.

    “James Newton Howard, the man, the myth, the absolute legend! Considering what’s he’s done, it’s an absolute honour to have done this with him, and we’re excited for the world to hear it,” Ulrich said.

    The thought of the heavy metal giants working on a Disney movie was certainly a surprise for fans of the band. But it turns out that Sean Bailey, who is the production president over at the studio, isn’t just a huge Metallica fan, but that Ulrich loves Disney movies, too.

    “It really goes back to (Bailey), who is a lifelong rock fan, and is just all-around one of the greatest, most friendly, generous, warm, and embracing people you’ll find in the music business,” Ulrich said.

    “My wife and I are big Disney fans, so there’s a great friendship there, and he’s always looked for the right match where there was a way that Metallica could contribute to some project of theirs.”

    “It’s kind of an interesting morph,” Ulrich said, “but it’s a very unusual morph in that it’s kind of his arrangement of ‘Nothing Else Matters’ that we’re playing.”

  • ‘Moana’ Star Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, family all test positive for COVID-19

    ‘Moana’ Star Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, family all test positive for COVID-19

    Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, star of Disney’s Moana, and his family have tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the star revealed Wednesday.

    Johnson says that he and his wife, and his two daughters tested positive for COVID-19 and have been battling the virus for the past two to three weeks.

    Now Disney’s upcoming Jungle Cruise star and one of the most popular entertainers on earth is urging fans to wear a mask and protect each other from this disease as you can see in the Instagram post below:

    “I wish it was only me who tested positive, but it wasn’t, it was my entire family,” the star said in an Instagram video Wednesday.

    “I wanted to give you guys a little helpful update on things that have been going on on my end for the past two-and-a-half to three weeks now. So the update is this: my wife Lauren as well as my two baby girls and myself, we have all tested positive for COVID-19,” Johnson began his video message.

    “I could tell you that this has been one of the most challenging and difficult things we have ever had to endure as a family, and for me, too, personally as well,” he continued. “And I’ve gone through some doozies in the past.”

  • New ‘Hocus Pocus’ Cookie Dough from Toll House Will Put a Spell on You

    New ‘Hocus Pocus’ Cookie Dough from Toll House Will Put a Spell on You

    With Halloween right around the corner its time to start streaming Hocus Pocus on a loop and to help celebrate, Nestle Toll House has released some Sanderson Sister’s inspired cookies that will have you running “Amok Amok Amok!”

    You can now find ready-to-bake Hocus Pocus cookie dough in your grocer’s freezer in 14-oz. packages. Inside is oatmeal peanut butter cookie dough with chocolate morsels and candy-coated gems.

    The gems come in three colors—orange, purple, and yellow—in an apparent nod to the immortal Sanderson sisters: Winifred, Sarah, and Mary as you can see in the post below:

    Each package comes with enough dough to make 20 cookies, and each cookie has only 90 calories. So not only is there enough dough to last you through repeat viewings but also you don’t have to feel guilty by the time you finish the whole package.

  • OFFICIAL: The Mandalorian: Season 2 Release Date Revealed

    OFFICIAL: The Mandalorian: Season 2 Release Date Revealed

    Disney Plus has finally announced an official release date for the second season of “The Mandalorian.”

    New episodes of “The Mandalorian” will debut on the streaming service on Oct. 30!

    The announcement was made on “The Mandalorian’s” official Twitter account on Wednesday as you can see in the tweet below:

    No new trailer has dropped for the Star Wars live action series starring Pedro Pascal (and Baby Yoda, technically named The Child), but Season 2 will include Timothy Olyphant in some fashion, Rosario Dawson as “Clone Wars” character Ahsoka Tano, and Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett.

    And fans can expect even more of “The Mandalorian” in the future. The series is in pre-production for a third season, and creator and showrunner Jon Favreau has been “writing season 3 for a while,” as sources close to the production said in the spring.

    The series, centered on Pascal as the titular Mandalorian bounty hunter who becomes caretaker to The Child, was Disney Plus’ first original hit upon launch last November.

    The streamer attracted over 60.5 million paying subscribers globally in the first nine months of its existence, proving to be a huge draw, even amid competition from a number of other new direct-to-consumer competitors that have launched in the last year.

    Disney Plus is now premiering Disney’s live-action version of “Mulan” on Friday, Sept. 4 for an additional $30. The ongoing coronavirus has meant mass closures of movie theaters nationwide, prompting the company to nix a theatrical release of the tentpole film in favor of releasing it directly on the streamer. The additional fee will keep “Mulan” in consumers’ accounts so long as they continue to subscribe to Disney Plus.

  • Celebrate 25 Years of Pixar All Month Long with Disney+ Watch Parties and More

    Celebrate 25 Years of Pixar All Month Long with Disney+ Watch Parties and More

    During September, Pixar Fest will honor the animation studio that has brought fans around the world together, with some of the most iconic moments in filmmaking history.

    Twenty five years ago, Pixar revolutionized the art of animation with the release of Toy Story, and has since continued to inspire curiosity, creativity, and imagination through its beloved characters and emotive stories that are cherished by families everywhere.

    A month-long celebration of all things Pixar includes weekly activities, digital activations, Disney+ watchalongs, new product launches, and more.

    Whether you are a hero, adventurer, or dreamer, Disney has something Pixar-perfect for you! Keep reading for a few ways you can join the fun this month.

    Beginning September 5th, every Saturday throughout the month, join fans around the nation to watch some of your favorite Pixar movies. Check out the Pixar Fest film schedule below, and get ready for a new adventure each week, right from the comfort of your own couch!

    Disney is also sharing an exciting lineup of Pixar Fest products for the ultimate Pixar fan, including an epic Buzz Lightyear Limited Edition Citizen Watch, Pixar Alien Remix plush from Mattel, and more!

    And, what’s a good movie night without movie-inspired snacks? Not to fret, we have you covered! Show off your culinary skills with the following tasty – and adorable – original recipes inspired by Pixar films. Right click on each recipe image to save!

    Edna A La Mode “Party Style”

    Frozen Banana Joy Pops

    Popcorn Balloons

    Sheriff Woody’s Star Ravioli

    Wizard Staff Pretzels

    Be sure to follow along the Pixar social handles and join the conversation using #PixarFest