Disney Used D23 to Lock a Sequel Calendar

Disney used its August D23 showcase in Anaheim to lock cinema dates from late 2026 through 2029, packing the big weekends with sequels, remakes and franchise returns. The X-Men casting and an Avengers: Doomsday look ate the chatter. The dates that will fill multiplexes are the family titles that printed money last year.

Nineteen days later, that map is clearer than the trailers. Frozen 3 sits on Thanksgiving week 2027, The Bluey Movie takes August 6, 2027, and Incredibles 3 is dated June 16, 2028. Hexed, a new Walt Disney Animation film, opens first, on November 25.

D23 Locked the 2027 to 2029 Calendar

The Honda Center showcase ran as a fan event, with first looks and celebrity walk-ons, and Disney posted the official D23 showcase roundup for members who were not in the room. The useful document is the dated slate that came with it.

Hexed is set for November 25, 2026. Avengers: Doomsday follows on December 18. Ice Age: Boiling Point is February 5, 2027, Gatto March 5, Star Wars: Starfighter May 28, The Bluey Movie August 6, and Frozen 3 November 24, 2027. 2028 then stacks Ghost Market on March 10, a live-action Tangled on March 31, an untitled X-Men film on May 5, Lilo & Stitch 2 on May 26, and Incredibles 3 on June 16. Coco 2 is November 21, 2029.

Zootopia 3 was confirmed with Ginnifer Goodwin and Ke Huy Quan back, with no date attached. Clay, a Walt Disney Animation original, is on the books for November 22, 2028. Avengers: Secret Wars is dated December 17, 2027, a year after Doomsday.

That is not a surprise dump. It is a three-year occupancy plan, and the pattern is blunt once the titles are sorted by weekend rather than by franchise logo.

A $1.87 Billion Sequel Habit

Last winter’s family pictures explain the habit. Zootopia 2 took $1.87 billion worldwide, second only to Ne Zha 2 on the 2025 worldwide box office rankings, with $1.44 billion of that from overseas. The live-action Lilo & Stitch finished at $1.04 billion. Those two titles did the work a Marvel year used to do.

The misses sat on the same ledger. Pixar’s original Elio, which cost about $150 million to make before marketing, ended at Elio’s $154 million worldwide total after a $20.8 million domestic opening, the weakest Pixar start on record. The live-action Snow White closed at $206 million. Inside Out 2, a sequel, had done $1.70 billion the year before.

LAST YEAR’S SPLIT

Frozen 2, Incredibles 2 and Coco are the priors D23 just booked sequels against. Snow White is the remake that failed, which is why Tangled still gets a 2028 date and why Lilo 2, riding a $1.04 billion live-action hit, is already dated May 26, 2028, with Maia Kealoha back and Angel in the mix.

The Rest of 2026 Is Already Sold

The X-Men film is 20 months out. The products that actually land before New Year’s Eve got less of the weekend, and they are close.

STILL ON THIS YEAR’S CLOCK

• September 15: Marvel’s Wolverine, from Insomniac Games, arrives on PlayStation 5, a date Marvel put on the same D23 stage as the movie cast.
• October 14: VisionQuest, the eight-episode WandaVision follow-up with Paul Bettany and James Spader, starts on Disney+.
• November 25: Hexed, with Hailee Steinfeld plus Jodie Foster as Queen Celeste and Walton Goggins as Beef Roger, a three-eyed green cat in a pink coat, opens the night before Thanksgiving.
• December 18: Avengers: Doomsday, with Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, Chris Evans as Steve Rogers and Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, hits theaters.

VisionQuest is the nearest Marvel series, and Marvel’s full D23 weekend recap frames it as a rebooted Vision hunting for meaning among the A.I. personas in his programming, including Ultron, then crossing paths with a boy named Thomas Shepard. Terry Matalas is the showrunner. Todd Stashwick plays the mercenary Paladin, and Faran Tahir returns as Raza from Iron Man.

Doomsday tickets are already on sale, which is why that footage, not Frozen 3, dominated the after-show talk. Hugh Jackman, with Ryan Reynolds feeding him lines, asked to be let into the movie. Marvel did not put them on the date.

Summer and Thanksgiving Go to Proven Brands

Once 2027 opens, the expensive weekends go to names audiences already know. Ice Age: Boiling Point, with Queen Latifah and Denis Leary, takes early February. The Bluey Movie, moving the ABC Kids show from 2D into CG under creator Joe Brumm for Ludo Studio and BBC Studios, takes August 6. Frozen 3 takes Wednesday, November 24, 2027, the same pre-Thanksgiving slot Frozen 2 used, and Kristen Bell said Anna will marry Jonathan Groff’s Kristoff, with Elsa beside her.

Jennifer Lee is writing and directing Frozen 3 with Trent Correy. Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez are back on songs. Footage and concept art put a new ice-queen threat against the wedding, and Olaf gets a girlfriend named Samantha. Frozen 4 is already in development, which is how this franchise now works: the third film is also a bridge.

THE HOLIDAY AND SUMMER STACK

Tegan Croft is Rapunzel in the live-action Tangled, dated March 31, 2028. The New Simpsons Movie sits on September 3, 2027, a 20th Century date in the same family-brand logic. Starfighter, with Ryan Gosling as a pilot named Kade and Shawn Levy directing, takes May 28, 2027, and is being sold as a Star Wars story cut off from the saga’s homework, which is the other way Disney now hedges: a new face on an old logo, on a holiday weekend.

The X-Men Cast That Ate the Weekend

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige saved the mutants for the end of the Honda Center show, which is how a May 2028 movie stole an August night. Jake Schreier, who directed Thunderbolts*, is making the untitled X-Men film’s first cast with Sadie Sink, already seen as Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Feige said more names are coming, and that several of these actors met backstage for the first time.

The X-Men are coming to the MCU:

Sadie Sink is Jean Grey
Kit Connor is Cyclops
Christopher Abbott is Professor Charles Xavier
Samara Weaving is Emma Frost
Inde Navarrette is Rogue
Maya Boyd is Storm
Adam Driver is Nathaniel Milbury

Only in theaters May 5, 2028. pic.twitter.com/ZCd4f7I1W7

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) August 15, 2026

Adam Driver crashed the panel on video from Pinewood, and declined Magneto on the way to the part he actually has.

When Kevin told me to show up for X-Men, I assumed he meant on set. So instead of being there in California, I’m here at Pinewood on this very lonely soundstage. Kevin and I have been talking for years about maybe joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And I think we finally found the perfect film at the perfect time. So I’m very excited to be playing Mag…. Nope. Even better. Nathaniel Milbury. So I’ll be right here, waiting for everybody to show up.

Adam Driver, D23 video message

THE MUTANTS NAMED ONSTAGE

• Jean Grey: Sadie Sink, already introduced in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
• Cyclops: Kit Connor as Scott Summers.
• Professor X: Christopher Abbott as Charles Xavier.
• Emma Frost: Samara Weaving.
• Rogue: Inde Navarrette.
• Storm: Maya Boyd as Ororo Munroe.
• Mister Sinister: Adam Driver as Nathaniel Milbury, dated May 5, 2028.

Sink told the crowd it was a relief to talk about the part after months of speculation. The recast is young, and that is the bet: a new class of mutants arriving after Doomsday and Secret Wars have used the old Fox faces as guest weapons. Sentinels showed up in the Doomsday look, which is how a 2026 Avengers film is being asked to do X-Men marketing 20 months early. The louder online split is whether this lineup plays as a superhero movie or as a teen ensemble with powers. Marvel did not answer that in Anaheim. It dated the film and left.

Why Gatto and Ghost Market Open in March

Pixar still has originals. They do not have Thanksgiving. Gatto, from Luca director Enrico Casarosa, is a Venice cat story with Mark Ruffalo as Nero, a street cat in debt to a feline mob, and it opens March 5, 2027. Ghost Market, co-directed by Jimenez and Jesse Andrews, is March 10, 2028. D23 footage followed a boy named Kyle into a dark Hawaiian kitchen, a bowl of warm soup waiting, and a line about Apple Pay before he FaceTimed the pitch: hungry ghosts, and not the other kind of scary movie.

Incredibles 3 is the summer Pixar date, June 16, 2028, written by Brad Bird and directed by Peter Sohn, with Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Vowell and Huck Milner back. Pixar chief creative officer Peter Docter sketched a household that has outgrown its own legend.

They want to prove that they are ready to be real Supers, and their parents aren’t quite so convinced. So they’ve been sneaking out at night to protect the city, and it doesn’t go over so well at home. To make matters worse, they are struggling to contain Jack Jack. A new threat is taking a heavy toll on Bob, who’s grappling with his own relevance in a world of Supers that may have outgrown him. Because even though Supers are legal again, that doesn’t mean all supers are good.

Peter Docter, Pixar, D23

Coco 2 waits until November 21, 2029, with Miguel now a teenager and Benjamin Bratt back as Ernesto de la Cruz. “He’s a little menace who ruined a career and destroyed a legend,” Bratt said. “Ernesto de la Cruz is back for revenge, proving that fate has twists.” Twelve years after Coco, the sequel still gets a holiday corridor. The new worlds get March.

That split is the second-order fact hiding under the casting news. After Elio, Pixar can still make Ghost Market. It will not open it on the weekend Frozen 3 will own.

Disney+ Is Holding the Other New Stories

The streaming slate is where Disney parked stories that do not need a thousand U.S. screens on Thanksgiving. Jon Favreau brought a first look at Oswald, a three-part Disney+ series for February 2027, built on the rabbit Disney lost and later got back. A Kingdom Hearts series is greenlit, from Tetsuya Nomura’s game, billed as a new story rather than a straight adaptation, with no premiere date. Walker Scobell introduced a Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 teaser and said this run is darker than the first two, shot while Season 2 was landing so the returning cast, Aryan Simhadri, Leah Sava Jeffries and Charlie Bushnell included, could adjust in real time.

WHAT SITS ON THE SERVICE

• VisionQuest: October 14, 2026, eight episodes, Bettany and Spader.
• Oswald: February 2027, three parts, Favreau.
• Ahsoka Season 2: January 20, 2027, with Rosario Dawson and Natasha Liu Bordizzo still hunting a way home while Lars Mikkelsen’s Thrawn presses the New Republic. Rory McCann takes over Baylan Skoll after Ray Stevenson’s death.
• Kingdom Hearts: series order only, no date.
• Romy & Michele 2: Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino have finished shooting the sequel, aimed at Hulu in 2027.

Ahsoka’s gap is the other occupancy tell. Season 1 aired in August 2023. Season 2 arrives in January 2027, about three and a half years later, which means 2026 will have gone without a new live-action Star Wars series even as Starfighter holds Memorial Day 2027. The theatrical brand and the streaming brand are no longer on the same clock.

Hexed arrives November 25, the night before Thanksgiving, as the first new Walt Disney Animation title since Zootopia 2 ran last winter. Feige said more X-Men casting is still coming, and that film remains dated May 5, 2028.