The Ultimate Disney Fan Event in Anaheim, California, has brought together 15,000 excited fans for a raft of film announcements, celebrity appearances and new footage from the studio’s most high-profile forthcoming projects.
The event has also seen a number of trailer debuts for highly-anticipated films. Mufasa: The Lion King is the followup – both prequel and sequel – to the hugely successful 2019 The Lion King, which used “photorealistic animation” to update the 1994 animation of the same name. The new film is directed by Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins, and features Aaron Pierre as a young Mufasa (who would grow up to be Simba’s father), and Kelvin Harrison Jr as Taka, Mufasa’s half brother who grows up to be lion baddie Scar.
Also released is a teaser trailer for Disney’s Snow White, a live-action remake of the studio’s foundational animation Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, originally released in 1937. The new version features Rachel Zegler, star of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, as Snow White, and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen. Marc Webb, of The Amazing Spider-Man and 500 Days of Summer, is the director, and the script is written by Greta Gerwig and Erin Cressida Wilson.
Another potentially major hit is Moana 2, which was introduced at the fan event by a dancing Dwayne Johnson. Moana 2 reunites Johnson (as shapeshifting deity Maui) with the first film’s star Auliʻi Cravalho as Moana, the daughter of a Polynesian chief who learns the art of “wayfinding”. Directed by David Derrick Jr, the fan event saw the release of the full trailer for the film.
The event also saw the release of trailers for key TV titles. Agatha All Along is a new series from Marvel, a spinoff from its hit Disney+ series WandaVision, featuring Kathryn Hahn in her role of witch Agatha Harkness and Heartstopper star Joe Locke as her “familar”, helping her to escape from the New Jersey smalltown where she is trapped.
Meanwhile, a trailer for the latest product of the Star Wars franchise, Skeleton Crew, has been made available. Starring Jude Law as “Force user” Jod Na Nawood, the series takes place in the same post-Return of the Jedi time period as The Mandalorian, and features a group of four kids trying to get back to their home planet after discovering a mysterious space ship.
