Tonnes of New Details Revealed About Disney's Upcoming Slate!

Blue Sky Disney, who always have reliable tips and sources from inside Disney, have just spilled the beans on what we can expect from the Mouse House post-Big Hero 6!

We're getting the studio's 53rd animated feature this winter, with Frozen; next year we get their Marvel-adaptation, Big Hero 6, (or the year after if you're from the UK); beyond that, we had titbits about a Byron Howard animal comedy, a Ron Clements and John Musker Tiki/Rumpelstiltskin film which may or may not be animated in a Paperman style, and a few other irons on the fire. We also had some release dates with no films matched. But BSD's Honor Hunter just blew all that out of the water with some super exciting details about what we can expect all the way up until 2018! Check out the juicy details below.

Tangled and Bolt co-director Byron Howard was reported to be working on an animal comedy starring Arrested Development star Jason Bateman. Blue Sky Disney says the film is called Zootopia and says that Jason Bateman will be "very foxy" in it. WDAS are sitting 2015 out (while Pixar will be releasing two films that year, Pete Docter's Inside Out and Andrew Stanton's Finding Dory) and that film will be hitting cinemas in 2016, on, we assume, the 4th March slot.

Apparently Howard's fellow Tangled director, Nathan Greno, was working on Zootopia, before moving onto his own project, another non-standard fairy tale, this time called Giants. Jack and the Beanstalk-based maybe? That will be Disney's second film of 2016, on 23rd November.

The studio are sitting 2017 out too, to accommodate for as of yet unspecified summer and winter Pixar releases, but are back twice over the following year. The first release of 2018 will "likely" be Ron and John's next film, which, as rumoured, will it seems be a Pacific Tiki tale. BSD describe the film, which is called Moana, as "a Polynesian tale involving the island folk and the idols made famous the world over." Honor seems pretty sure the film will be animated in the CG-hybrid fashion of the studio's Oscar-winning short film, Paperman. Assuming this is the first 2018 release, it's set for 8th March.

Finally, the post says, "if story issues are worked out Dean Wellin's teenage space race animated film will rush to the screens [in late 2018]." Honor also adds that the film is as much a departure from the Disney norm as Big Hero 6 will be. So get hyped for that one!

So here's Walt Disney Animation's schedule for the next 5 years:

• Frozen (dir.: Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee) - 27th November, 2013
• Big Hero 6 (dir.: Don Hall) - 7th November, 2014
• Zootopia (dir.: Byron Howard) - 4th March, 2016
• Giants (dir.: Nathan Greno) - 23rd November, 2016
• Moana (dir. Ron Clements and John Musker) - 8th March, 2018
• Untitled (dir.: Dean Wellin) - 21st November, 2018

We speculated as to what the films on Disney's upcoming slate might be on episode 2 of the A113Animation Podcast, but it's beyond exciting to get some actual blanks filled in! Honor also says the first full theatrical trailer for Frozen will appear around the time Sony's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is released - so next month.

Before all this, we have Frozen this winter, and Big Hero 6 next winter.

To say this is an unsubstantiated report would be foolish, Blue Sky Disney and Honor were the first to mention Big Hero 6 - months before any "official" word - and his tips are always golden. So, taking all this for gospel, this is an incredibly exciting slate! It's great to see Disney broadening their creative horizons even further: Zootopia promises to be quirky fun, Giants means we're still getting Disney fairy tales, Moana is Ron and John so will be awesome, and that final "teenage space race" film certainly sounds intriguing. Keep up the good work, Disney fellas!

Thoughts?

Thanks, Blue Sky Disney!

UPDATE - 22/07/2013, 21:44 (GMT): Incorrect date of 4th April, 2016 changed to correct one of 4th March, 2016.