As Star Wars Rebels ends, Disney is taking the TV franchise lightyears ahead. The mind behind Disney streaming’s live-action Star Wars TV series is none other than Jon Favreau, who will write and produce.
Netflix’s scramble to cut some kind of deal with Disney after the company announced their own Disney-exclusive streaming service last month seems to have come to naught, as CEO Bob Iger announced that Marvel and Star Wars movies would also be among the films appearing exclusively on the new app Disney hopes to launch by 2019. Better get those Moana viewings in fast, folks.
Disney sent shockwaves through the world of streaming media earlier this week when it announced the company was ending its agreement with Netflix in 2019 in order to start its own competitive streaming movie and TV service. So some kind of “Dizflix” is coming, along with a similar ESPN service for sports due next year...
According to Disney Parks’ executive Bob Chapek they are “the most ambitious lands that we have ever built at Walt Disney Imagineering.” They’re Star Wars Land, coming to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World in the near future. And this weekend at the D23 convention, Disney gave fans a look at the massive model for their creation.
Disney announced a slate of 19 upcoming films with release dates through 2020. In addition to Marvel’s Ant-Man 2, three untitled Marvel movies and the release date for The Incredibles 2, Disney also revealed dates for four new live-action fairy tales. According to Variety, the untitled fairy tales will be released on December 22, 2017, November 2, 2018, March 29, 2019 and November 8, 2019. But what could these untitled movies be?
So far, we only know some basic info about Disney’s next animated musical, Moana — Dwayne Johnson joined the voice cast months ago, and the studio offered a few details during D23, but nothing very substantial, like who exactly is playing the title role of the next Disney princess? A new feature introduces you to Auli’i Cravalho, a young Hawaiian girl who beat out hundreds of hopefuls in Disney’s search for the voice of Moana.
If you’re a fan of Disney baddies like cigar-smoking Bill Sykes from Oliver & Company (and really, who isn’t a fan of Bill Sykes from Oliver & Company?), this news is relevant to your tobacco-stained interests: The Walt Disney Company has banned all depictions of smoking from all of its films from all of its child-oriented labels (including Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm) rated G through PG-13. Via a press release:
If you keep your eyes peeled during Tangled you can catch a glimpse of some other Disney classics. In the background, there are nods to Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast and Frozen, plus other references from classic Disney fairy tales. This is just one of the facts packed into the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies, which lets it hair down with Tangled!
Star Wars Rebels feels the force of a largely unexplored period in Star Wars history, but did you know the Disney XD animated series owes quite a bit to Ralph McQuarrie’s original movie concept art? Or that it needs its own continuity expert on the films? These are just some of the Imperial intelligence to uncover in the eighth episode of ‘You Think You Know TV?,’ which ignites the spark of Disney’s Star Wars Rebels!
Acquiring Lucasfilm and Marvel were just two minor steps in Disney’s grand plan to eventually own everything you love and control your life as Entertainment Overlord Supreme of the Planet Earth. But to be fair, they are a benevolent god. A caring god. A god that wants to make its riches available to you, should you want to indulge yourself. So prepare thyself: TV channels based entire on Marvel and Star Wars content may be coming.