Star Wars and Marvel: all the news coming to Disney + and to the cinema
Disney Animation Studios and Pixar
Let's start with tradition. We already knew that the next Disney Animation Studios film would be Raya and the Last Dragon, we suspected that health problems would limit its distribution in theaters and Investor Day confirmed every possible conjecture: the film, directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, will arrive in theaters and directly on Disney + via VIP Access on March 5th. For the uninitiated, it is a computer graphic fantasy set in the oriental world of Kumandra: the protagonist, Raya, will have to find the last dragon still alive to stop the monstrous Druuns that threaten humanity. Don Hall has already directed Big Hero 6, so it is only natural that he took the floor to illustrate the new television series focusing on the robot protagonist of that film. The series will be titled Baymax! and will see the chubby mechanical hero in his original role as a paramedic. The sick of San Fransokyo are warned.Staying on the subject of TV series, one will arrive inspired by Zootropolis in 2022 which will be called Zootropolis +: we will see all the protagonists of the splendid feature film released in 2016 and it seems that it will be a procedural police series with comedy colors just like the movie. Also planned two TV series centered on two more or less famous "Disney princesses". Vaiana, the protagonist of Oceania, will be one of the two: the series will arrive in 2023 and will continue its adventures on land and sea. The other series will have as protagonist Tiana from The Princess and the Frog: it will be a musical series, rightly set in the picturesque New Orleans of the 2009 film. Iwaju, which means "future", will instead be a revolutionary science fiction series set in Nigeria that we will see in 2022 and which Disney is producing together with Kugali. Finally, the next classic feature film, the sixtieth, will be titled Encanto and will take place in Colombia: it will be a musical that will bear the signature, among others, of the talented Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Let's come to Pixar, now . The next film directed by Pete Doctor, Soul, will arrive on Disney + on December 25th. While waiting to figure out how many handkerchiefs we will have to sob and blow our noses, we have discovered that a series of shorts and various Pixar contents will also arrive on the platform. Inside Pixar will be a kind of documentary series that will take viewers behind the scenes of Pixar masterpieces, and will be available in January 2021, while Pixar Popcorn, also scheduled for next year, will tell the misadventures of some popular characters through a series of short films: one of them will focus on Up's Dug, for example. A TV series inspired by Cars is also coming: we will see it in 2022 and will have the usual Lightning McQueen as protagonist. The creators of Toy Story 4, on the other hand, are working on Win or Lose, another unreleased series focused on different perspectives that we will see only in 2023.
The new feature films have thought of the new feature films to conclude the presentation. The first to arrive after Soul will be Luca, directed by the Genoese Enrico Casarosa, who in the summer of 2021 will take us to the Italian Riviera in the company of the homonymous protagonist, struggling with adolescence and disturbing secrets. In 2022 it will be the turn of Turning Red, which will be followed by Lightyear: the latter will be a real science fiction film in CGI that will tell the "origins" of Buzz Lightyear, the heroic space ranger of Toy Story. Voicing Buzz this time will be Chris Evans, the retired former Captain America.
Marvel Studios
Speaking of Captain America ... Investor Day was a a good opportunity to release a new trailer for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the second Marvel miniseries coming to Disney + starting March 19, 2021. In the miniseries, Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) will have to contend with the return of Zemo (Daniel Brühl) and with Captain America that the government unwillingly chose to replace Steve Rogers, John Walker. Shootings, jokes and lots of action for a highly anticipated production that has slipped by a few months compared to expected: it will in fact be the second Marvel series because starting from January 15, 2021 we will be able to see WandaVision always on Disney +. The six-episode miniseries, highly anticipated due to what Kevin Feige has called a revolutionary format, will mix comedy, dramedy and even sitcoms with action and science fiction from Marvel superheroes - obviously centered around Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) who live in a quiet neighborhood in the American suburbs.The problem is that Vision should be dead and Wanda is a very powerful manipulator of reality. Anyone who has read the comics knows very well what dangerous road we are on, and the fact that the cast is also Teyonah Parris to play Monica Rambeau, the daughter of Captain Marvel's now grown friend, is very suspicious. Staying on the subject of TV series, WandaVision will be followed by Loki: he will arrive in May and will follow the misadventures of the god of deception, played by Tom Hiddleston, who survived in an alternate timeline of Avengers: Endgame. Owen Wilson will be in the game as Mobius, a Time Variance Authority agent, and the hilarious trailer hints at an action-packed and humorous miniseries in which our Loki will play the part of the anti-hero as some sort of 007 thunderstorm. Loki will serve to cement the idea of a multiverse, which will be very important in Phase 4 and which will represent the leitmotif of What if ...? The latter will be a cartoon miniseries that we will always see on Disney + in the summer of 2021 and that will tell the alternative realities of the official Marvel Cinematic Universe, involving the voices of practically every actor who has already appeared in the films.
Disney has an avalanche of Marvel series and miniseries in the works for its digital platform, which one way or another will fit in with mainstream movies. Kevin Feige has confirmed Hawkeye, the series centered on the Avenger of the same name, once again played by Jeremy Renner. He will be joined by young Hailee Steinfeld as the second Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, along with Vera Farmiga, who will play her mother Eleanor. The series will arrive in 2022, after Ms. Marvel: the young heroine of Muslim origins who conquered the world with her comics will have the face of Iman Vellani. We only saw a small teaser consisting of a handful of scenes, but it seems Feige got the casting of the protagonist perfectly right. Moon Knight and She-Hulk will then follow, although there are no official dates other than a provisional 2022.
Moon Knight will focus on deranged vigilante Marc Spector, played by Oscar Isaac; the second will see Tatiana Maslany in the role of Jennifer Walters, a lawyer who in the comics is Bruce Banner's cousin and obtains her powers with a blood transfusion, becoming the She-Hulk. Mark Ruffalo will return to play the role of the Green Goliath, but Tim Roth will also be in those of the Abomination, last seen in The Incredible Hulk of 2008. Other series in the works include Secret Invasion, inspired by the eponymous maxisaga comic book of 2008, which will see the return of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn as the alien Talos. Armor Wars was the 1987 Iron Man comic adventure that inspired the TV miniseries of the same name: Don Cheadle will put on the War Machine armor again and will have to stop the parts that have taken over Stark technology. It will probably link to Ironheart, another Disney + series centered around the character of Riri Williams, who will be played by Dominique Thorne and who in the comics has become a kind of young female Tony Stark.
Let's get to the movies, but first let's go through Disney + again. We haven't heard from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 except we'll see it in 2023, but we do know James Gunn will direct Guardians of the Galaxy: Holyday Special. We will see it at the end of 2021, together with a hilarious miniseries focused on the legendary Groot, entitled ... I'm Groot, of course. Cate Shortland's Black Widow, who will she review in action - for the last time? - Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff, has been postponed again to next May, and all Phase 4 films have been postponed along with it. Strangely we haven't seen any trailers either of Shang-Chi and the Secret of the Ten Rings, scheduled for July, or of The Eternals, which should arrive in November under the direction of Chloé Zhao: on the virtual stage they only mentioned them, then focusing on what seem to be the most important films of the new course.
The first will undoubtedly be Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, scheduled for March 2022. In the sequel to the film dated 2016, this time directed by none other than Sam Raimi , we will see the old cast (and therefore also Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams and Benedict Wong, as well as Benedict Cumberbatch) to which will be added Elizabeth Olsen and the new entry Xochitl Gomez. The latter will be America Chavez, the heroine also known as Miss America. The film will be crucial in the development of Phase 4: Feige has in fact stated that it will continue the story started in WandaVision and will deeply influence the next film starring Spider-Man. On the latter, still in the hands of Sony, very few words were spent; For some days, however, persistent rumors have been circulating about the presence of Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx and Emma Stone in the cast of Jon Watts' film, which would suggest an important crossover between past alternative universes and present that could make fans of cinematic Spider-Man go crazy with happiness.
Coming out in 2022, Thor: Love and Thunder will likely be the film that closes Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directed once again by Taika Waititi, it will field an important cast which has been added, as was revealed during Investor Day, also Christian Bale. The actor will play Gorr the Slaughterer of Gods, the most powerful enemy of the moment. After 2022, two more sequels will arrive: Captain Marvel 2, directed by Nia DaCosta, and Black Panther 2. Regarding the latter, who should see Ryan Coogler behind the camera again, Feige made a clarification: Disney will not replace the late Chadwick Boseman under the mask of the Black Panther, and instead will explore Wakanda by focusing the story on different characters. Finally, two other films have been announced to close the Marvel circle. Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania will be the third installment in the Ant-Man saga and will see all the old cast return, as well as director Peyton Reed, and will also be joined by Kathryn Newton, who will play Cassie Lang, and Jonathan Majors, who instead it will be Kang the Conqueror. Last but not least, a very last, very short teaser for the new Fantastic Four reboot that has found its director: Jon Watts, the same as Spider-Man.
Star Wars
Impressive too the creative effort behind the new Star Wars themed proposals from Disney and Lucasfilm. Kathleen Kennedy obviously began the presentation talking about The Mandalorian, the series that many are now associating with the Disney + service. Strengthened by the extremely positive response to both the first and second seasons, Disney is already preparing a third year and two spin-off series, both entrusted to the capable hands of Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau. Ahsoka will tell the adventures of the former Jedi, now played live action by actress Rosario Dawson; Rangers of the New Republic, on the other hand, does not yet have an official synopsis or a specific cast, but we know that it will be set in the time window in which The Mandalorian takes place, just like Ahsoka, and will have Gina Carano's Cara Dune among the protagonists. A Droid Story will also be a miniseries focusing on an unreleased droid that will accompany R2-D2 and C-3PO in their new adventures.Diego Luna, on the other hand, will reprise the role of Cassian Andor in the miniseries Andor he already was it was announced some time ago but it had disappeared from the radar, to the point that we thought it had been canceled. The miniseries has entered pre-production, however, and will tell the adventures of the rebel we met in Rogue One. Considering how the film ended, it's clear that Andor will be the bizarre prequel to a prequel and will also see Alan Tudyk returning, who had already voiced the K-2SO droid. We will see it in 2022, while in 2021 the production of the highly anticipated Obi-Wan Kenobi will begin. The miniseries will take place ten years after Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and will obviously feature the Jedi of the same name, played again by Ewan McGregor. But there is a surprise: Hayden Christensen will return to play Anakin Skywalker, probably as a memory since at that point he has already become Darth Vader.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch was also shown in the form of a trailer, the new series in computer graphics written by Dave Filoni that will be a real sequel to The Clone Wars, using the same style of animation and character design to tell the missions of Bad Batch, a team of genetically modified "super clones". We will see her in 2021, while we will have to wait a few more years for Lando, focused on the adventures of the fascinating smuggler ... even if it is not clear if we are talking about the young one, played by Donald Glover in Solo, or the classic one, that is Billy Dee Williams. Also coming The Acolyte, a thriller series set in the last years of the High Republic, and Willow, reboot of the 1988 film of the same name by George Lucas, because yes, in case you didn't know, it was set on a planet in the galaxy far, far away. Warwick Davis will return to play the protagonist. Finally, Star Wars Visions: Disney will entrust this anthology series to the best Japanese animation studios, a bit like the Watchowski sisters did at the time of Animatrix.
As for the movies, everything is silent on the front of the trilogy set in the era of the High Republic, but Disney has prepared a nice teaser with Patty Jenkins wearing a rebel pilot uniform: this is how we have discovered Rogue Squadron, the new film from the director of Wonder Woman that will arrive at Christmas 2023 and will tell the adventures of an unprecedented generation of pilots and clashes between starfighters. Taika Waititi, on the other hand, will direct another untitled Star Wars film: now in the Disney stable, the director has already directed the eighth episode of The Mandalorian. While we are at it, it is worth taking a moment to distance ourselves from the distant galaxy but still remain in the imagination of George Lucas ... and Steven Spielberg: in fact, in 2022, a new Indiana Jones will arrive that, we hope, will make us forget Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Obviously Harrison Ford will once again play the role of the legendary Professor Jones, directed by James Mangold.
