Frozen 3 and Toy Story 5 have confirmed their release dates. Disney had their Quarter 1 2024 earnings conference call today and announced a whole bunch of developments. Fans of Frozen and Toy Story can look forward to expansions of those franchises in 2026. CEO Bob Iger said, “And we’re already looking forward to 2026 and beyond with Frozen 3, the first Toy Story movie since 2019, and a new Star Wars movie that brings the Mandalorian and Grogu to the big screen for the very first time.” So, that seems pretty definitive from the head of the entire company. Disney had already stated their intention to make more sequels in response to a sluggish 2023.
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A quick scroll through the established release schedule shows a Pixar movie slotted for June 19 2026. Another untitled Disney Amination project is slated for November 25 2026. Both of those sound like the far-flung future. But, 2026 is coming up sooner than any of us would expect. Iger sounded confident about all these sequels and that seems to be a strategy that Disney will not be diverted from. They’re betting that some of the other high-profile underperformance stemmed from them not being slam dunk properties. Only time will tell.
Frozen III Is On Deck
Frozen III is one of the biggest films on the entire Disney calendar. Unfortunately, it won’t have one of the original’s biggest creative forces in the director’s chair. The Wrap reported that Jennifer Lee won’t be directing the third installment. The original movie turned 10 last year., The frenzy over the property hasn’t died down. Annecy Film Festival 2023 saw Lee talk about the film. Luckily, she’s advising and working on Frozen III as it continues production.
“I can’t say where we are [with Frozen 3],” Lee explained. “All our stories are driven by the artists in the studio. Where we’re going with Frozen did not come from me. It came from an incredible person. That’s a new piece, I’ve told no one. And I’ve been blown away by it and I’m just having a blast with that team.”
“I’m doing what I do with all the other projects,” Lee continued. “It’s really fun on Frozen,…cause we’ve lived the world for awhile together and a lot of the artists in the studio grew up with that film too, both of them, and have been there the whole way…They kinda own them as much as anyone else.”
Bob Iger Defends Disney’s Releases
2023’s Disney slate drew a lot of conversation. With only a handful of the smash-successes that characterized 2019 and the pre-pandemic, obversers wondered if change was in the air. A previous earnings call saw the CEO defending their wins amid a changing landscape for theatrical distribution.
“Regarding our studio performance, let’s put things in perspective a little bit,” Iger asserted. “The studio has had a tremendous run over the last decade, perhaps the greatest run that any studio has ever had, with multiple billion dollar hits. And including, by the way, two that were relatively recent. One in particular, Avatar: The Way of Water, and we also had a pretty strong performance with Guardians of the Galaxy [Vol. 3], which has done, I think, approximately under $850 million at [the] global box office.”
“That said, the performance of some of our recent films has definitely been disappointing, and we don’t take that lightly,” the executive added. “As you’d expect, we’re very focused on improving the quality and the performance of the films that we’ve got coming up. It’s something that I’m working closely with the studio on. I’m personally committed to spending more time and attention on that as well.”
Are you excited about the sequels? Let us know down in the comments!
