The 2015 D23 Expo kicked off today, and one of the most anticipated events was a joint panel featuring the upcoming slates for Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. Hosted by John Lasseter, the nearly 3-hour presentation was stuffed to the gills with new footage, special guests, and a few surprise announcements.
Up first was Disney’s Zootopia, which Lasseter described as one of Disney’s classic “talking animal movies,” but made for today’s audience. It’s essentially a buddy cop film about Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), the first rabbit to join the Zooptopia Police Department. When Judy is given 48 hours to solve a case or be dismissed from the force, she finds herself teaming up with Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a con artists fox who has little interest in lending a helping hand.
After treating the audience to a pair of clips, Disney also announced that pop sensation Shakira had joined the cast as Gazelle, Zootopia’s most prolific musical artist, and would be recording a new original song for the film. Shakira herself appeared in a pre-recorded clip to give the audience a brief sample of the song.
After the Zootopia presentation, Lasseter returned to the stage to talk about Disney’s approach to fairy tales, noting that the Disney version of a classic tale often becomes “the definitive version of that story” and citing Snow White, Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella among the examples. “But one fairy tale that doesn’t have a definitive version is Jack and the Beanstalk.”
And thus came the announcement of Gigantic, a new spin on the story from director Nathan Greno (Tangled) and producer Dorothy McKim (Get a Horse!), with music from Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (Frozen). In this version, set in Spain during the Age of Exploration, Jack climbs into the sky to find an entire civilization of giants and befriends a 60-foot-tall 11-year-old girl named Inma. Gigantic is scheduled for release in 2018.
Next up was Moana, a story inspired by the mythology of the South Pacific islands that finds a teenage girl setting out on an adventure across the ocean with a demi-god named Maui. The film comes from directors Ron Clements and John Musker, the team responsible for The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, and based on the footage we saw it could be one of the studio’s most beautiful films yet.
The directors stressed the importance of finding the right actor to provide the voice of Maui, and Dwayne Johnson took the stage to a thunderous ovation. He told the audience that one of his biggest dreams was to be a part of the Disney family, and thanked Lasseter and the filmmakers for helping him realize that dream. The directors rolled a brief clip featuring an introduction to the character, and then Johnson welcomed Opetaia Foa’i onstage to perform a song from the film. Moana will open on November 23, 2016.
Then it was time for Pixar to take the stage, with Lasseter noting that 2015 would be the first time in history that the studio would release two films in the same year. The first of those films, Inside Out, hit theaters in June, and their next offering will be November’s The Good Dinosaur. Lasseter invited director Pete Sohn onstage, who related a very emotional story about his mother being the inspiration for him to pursue a career in animation, before introducing some gorgeous new footage from the film.
One of the clips featured Arlo, the film’s protagonist, undertaking a mission at the behest of a trio of T-Rexes voiced by Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin and A.J. Buckley. The Good Dinosaur looks to have plenty of humor, but also promises to be an emotional tale – one clip in particular had plenty of audiences members dabbing at the corners of their eyes when the house lights came up.
Finally, after a humorous video reel featuring Ellen DeGeneres in multiple clips from her talk show, beseeching Pixar to move forward with a sequel to Finding Nemo, Lasseter welcomed the comedienne onstage to introduce some footage from Finding Dory. And along with footage came some more details about the film, including a few new cast members.
Ed O’Neill will provide the voice of an octopus named Hank, while his Modern Family costar Ty Burrell is onboard as a beluga whale named Bailey and Kaitlin Olson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) voices a whale shark with a bit of an identity crisis. The footage shown looked great, and felt like a natural extension of the original film – we can’t wait to see more. Finding Dory will hit theaters on June 17, 2016.
Finally, to close out the panel, Lasseter pointed out that it had been 20 years since the original Toy Story, and after the release of Toy Story 3 he vowed not to revisit the franchise unless the studio came up with an idea that was just as good, if not better, than the third film. He and Andrew Stanton came up with the concept for Toy Story 4 during a production meeting for another project, and after Stanton wrote “a beautiful treatment,” they decided to move forward.
Lasseter himself will return to direct Toy Story 4, which he announced would explore a new genre for the series: this time, the film will be a love story, as Woody and Buzz set out on an adventure to reunite Woody with Little Bo Peep – and meet plenty of new toys in the process. Toy Story 4 will be released on June 16, 2017.
The evening closed with Lasseter inviting Randy Newman onstage for a performance of You’ve Got a Friend in Me, which concluded with green Army men rappelling from the ceiling and performing an elaborate dance number before Woody, Buzz, Mr. Potato Head and several other characters came out to bid farewell to the audience. It was a great presentation from start to finish, and the next few years of Disney animation are shaping up to be phenomenal.