Animated Film Announcements at the D23 Expo

Throughout the weekend, Disney surprised us all with announcements for future live action and animated films. On Friday, the place to be was in the audience for the Pixar and Animation studios upcoming films presentation with John Lasseter! Yes, THE John Lasseter!  After grabbing my amazing seat, I do not believe I was fully prepared for the extravagant event that was about to take place. After watching a small clip of everything that was upcoming, John came out on stage in all his glory. He even brought his own iconic t-shirts that were blasted into the audience with canons!

He explained that there are different studios for animation. He started with Disneytoons Studios where he showed us a clip of an upcoming film that has yet to be named. They are currently calling it “the speed test” and it was a stunning display of aviation and space. It is planning to make it’s appearance in April 2019.

Now we drifted onto the Walt Disney Animation Studios with the new “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure!” It will be a 21 minute short at the beginning of the new Coco film coming out this November. Also, they introduced the new Frozen 2 movie that is being researched in Norway currently. To help him announce a hilarious clip from Olaf’s short, he welcomed Kristen Bell (Anna) and Josh Gad (Olaf) onto the stage! The crowd exploded with excitement and Josh sang the song in perfect synchronization with the clip they showed. It was fantastic and I did not think it could get better….

It did. It really did.

Next up was the announcement of Wreck it Ralph 2……actually….let me rephrase….Ralph breaks the Internet: Wreck it Ralph 2!

This will be the new name for this film and it comes out in 2018. He then welcomed Sarah Silverman on stage (Vanellope). As cute and sassy as ever, she came out to the sound of a roaring applause to tell us about the clip we were about to see from the new movie. A clip that had Vanellope, a new princess, finally meeting all of the previous Disney princesses to date. As we watched this clip, the crowd was rolling. It was quite literally one of the funniest scenes in Disney movie history. It is something I wish I could watch over and over again. Once the clip ended, John just smiled at us. He knew by our reaction that it was a winner…..a real winner. Then he made the announcement that every original actress who voiced a Disney princess are the voices in that clip! As if that wasn’t enough, each actress was then announced to join each other on stage one by one! Everyone from Jodi Benson to Paige O’Hara to Mandy Moore were all standing before us! We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. One of the funniest scenes ever created and all of the original voices were there…..it was AMAZING!

After a calm down moment, He went on to Pixar Studios…..and he started with Incredibles 2! I didn’t think my heart could take it.

After a hilarious video glorifying Edna Mode featuring the reality show Project Runway judges, John then announces the original cast of Incredibles. They all came out on stage one by one including Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter and Samuel L. Jackson!  After watching a fantastic new clip that shows Jack Jack using all of his powers, we move on to Toy Story 4 and talk to the new director Josh Cooley. It is set to be released in Summer 2019 and should be pretty amazing. After introducing us to a new suburban fantasy world film that has yet to be named, we then moved onto Coco. We got to hear from Benjamin Bratt and see all of the amazing colors this new film has in store!

I left in wonder and shell shock. I couldn’t believe everything that had happened! It truly is an amazing time for animation!