Mak­ing sense of Disney’s del­uge of new con­tent announcements

Much in the same way that an approach­ing army will fire all their can­nons simul­ta­ne­ous­ly for a shock-and-awe effect intim­i­dat­ing the ene­my with the sheer num­ber of their forces, yes­ter­day saw Disney’s annu­al investor pre­sen­ta­tion, an orgias­tic day­long fes­ti­val of IP-bandy­ing and con­tent-pro­mo­tion that charts the breadth of a vast brand­ed king­dom. Those movie­go­ers into Star Wars, Mar­vel, or oth­er fran­chis­es fond­ly remem­bered from a sim­pler youth met with good news – per­haps too much good news.

Dis­ney exec­u­tives announced a tru­ly stag­ger­ing num­ber of upcom­ing projects, with­out ques­tion the most any sin­gle stu­dio has unveiled at any sin­gle event in the his­to­ry of mov­ing pic­tures. I am remind­ed of the minor yet sig­nif­i­cant detail from the nov­el Cloud Atlas, which pos­tu­lat­ed a future in which all films are referred to as ​“Dis­neys,” an all-encom­pass­ing, real­i­ty-bend­ing cor­po­rate metonymy. Before you can say ​‘mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion,’ let’s take a look at what they’ve got planned:

They start­ed with the live-action pro­duc­tions com­ing from their high-pro­file acqui­si­tion Fox, a slate that includes a series star­ring Sele­na Gomez with recent­ly joined com­e­dy duo Steve Mar­tin and Mar­tin Short called Only Mur­ders in the Build­ing, as well as an Eliz­a­beth Holmes movie with Kate McK­in­non to rival to iden­ti­cal project being devel­oped with Jen­nifer Lawrence.

Also, we’ve got a ​“har­row­ing” dra­ma series called Dopesick with Michael Keaton, Rosario Daw­son, and Peter Sars­gaard to look for­ward to, as well as a new series from Big Lit­tle Lies cre­ator David E. Kel­ley reunit­ing him with Nicole Kid­man. Melis­sa McCarthy will join her in Nine Per­fect Strangers.

From their bou­tique cable TV arm FX, we’ll get a series cast­ing Jeff Bridges as a CIA oper­a­tive called The Old Man, a Tai­ka Wait­i­ti-devel­oped com­e­dy about Native Amer­i­can teens in East Okla­homa titled Reser­va­tion Dogs, and an adap­ta­tion of cult graph­ic nov­el Y: The Last Man, with Diane Lane set to lead. In more sen­si­bil­i­ty-offend­ing news, Ryan Mur­phy will fur­ther anthol­o­gize what is already an anthol­o­gy series with the plu­ral­ized Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ries, which shrinks the sea­son-long arcs to episode length (imag­ine a slop­py, undis­ci­plined Twi­light Zone).

James Clavell’s nov­el Shogun willl get the small-screen treat­ment, one of the more promis­ing prospects. And then there’s the upcom­ing series based on the Alien films from showrun­ner Noah Haw­ley, cur­rent­ly hard at work sav­aging the good name of Far­go. Sure­ly the great­est sci-fi film of all time won’t prove a chal­lenge for him.

They say the uni­verse is always expand­ing, but the Star Wars uni­verse seems to be doing so at a far more pre­cip­i­tous rate than most. We’re going to get Man­dalo­ri­an spin-offs galore: an Ahso­ka spin­off with Rosario Daw­son; Rangers of the New Repub­lic chron­i­cling galaxy-hop­ping tales of der­ring-do; a Rogue One series about Diego Luna​‘s char­ac­ter Andor; an Obi-Wan focused series that finds Ewan McGre­gor repris­ing his role in the years fol­low­ing the events of Return of the Sith (with Hay­den Chris­tensen step­ping in as Darth Vad­er); an ani­mat­ed series called The Bad Batch that has no rela­tion to the Ana Lily Amir­pour film of the same name; a series of ani­mé-style shorts known as Star Wars Visions, a solo out­ing for Lan­do Cal­riss­ian; a Leslye Head­land-direct­ed mys­tery series set dur­ing what­ev­er the High Repub­lic era is; and an adven­ture film that’s just droids. Pre­sum­ably, there will be peo­ple in this world will­ing to watch all, or some, of these.

Mov­ing on to oth­er pro­duc­tions from Lucas­film, shoot­ing high­er than the straight-to-Dis­ney plus swill enu­mer­at­ed above: Ron Howard​‘s 1988 dark fan­ta­sy film Wil­low will find a sec­ond life as a series with orig­i­nal tal­ent War­wick Davis, and the YA book series Chil­dren of Blood and bone (billed by many as an African Game of Thrones, I assume with few­er breasts) will take TV show form. Waititi’s got a new Star Wars install­ment, and James Man­gold​‘s got a new Indi­ana Jones install­ment. For all things, new installments.

How about the live-action pro­duc­tions from Dis­ney itself, geared to a more fam­i­ly-friend­ly demo­graph­ic than the out­put from Fox? There’s a Turn­er and Hooch remake, a Mighty Ducks reboot, a Hocus Pocus sequel, a girls’ bas­ket­ball movie star­ring John Sta­mos, and an adap­ta­tion of pop­u­lar chap­ter book The Mys­te­ri­ous Bene­dict Soci­ety fea­tur­ing Tony Hale and Kris­ten Schaal. Zac Efron will star in a remake of Three Men and a Baby, while Kenya Bar­ris will pro­duce a Cheap­er By the Dozen remake (itself remade back in 2003!) focused on a mixed-race family.

I like to pic­ture Bobs Iger and Chapek, reign­ing kings of the Dis­ney fief­dom, pac­ing back and forth on a giant stage mut­ter­ing ​“what else, what else,” like a cou­ple of stalled stand-up come­di­ans while get­ting through the rest of their unend­ing spiel. There will be an Ice Age spin­off, an ani­mat­ed Night at the Muse­um, and a pho­to­re­al­is­tic Lion King pre­quel cour­tesy of Bar­ry Jenk­ins.

On the big­ger-bud­get end of things, there’s the Dwayne John­son vehi­cle (pun intend­ed) Jun­gle Cruise, a live-action Lit­tle Mer­maid, and a Smurfs-style CGI/live-action hybrid about pesky chip­munks Chip ​‘n’ Dale from the Lone­ly Island team and John Mulaney. Auteurs abound, as Robert Zemeck­is tack­les Pinoc­chio with Tom Han­ks as Gep­pet­to while David Low­ery gives his take on the mythos of Peter Pan and Wendy Darling.

The list goes on, and on, and on: a sequel to Enchant­ed log­i­cal­ly titled Dis­en­chant­ed, an Afro­fu­tur­ist sci-fi series called Iwájú (this one actu­al­ly sounds kind of awe­some), and a third Sis­ter Act film. Disney’s august ani­ma­tion house will bring us two fea­tures, the first being the adven­ture Raya and the Last Drag­on, the sec­ond being the Colom­bian fan­ta­sy Encan­to. From Pixar, there’s spin-off series for Up and Cars, and new fea­tures Luca in 2021, about a pair of young boys falling in, uh, friend­ship in Italy, and Turn­ing Red in 2022, about an eas­i­ly embar­rassed girl who trans­forms into a gigan­tic red pan­da when she feels self-con­scious. As one does.

But wait, there’s more!

Chris Evans will voice Toy Sto­ry​‘s Buzz Lightyear in a solo project, but not the toy, the real space­man that Buzz Lightyear was based on. Or rather, the ​‘real’ space­man that Buzz Lightyear was based on, mak­ing the toy-per­son a fake embod­i­ment of a dif­fer­ent fake thing. The fas­ci­nat­ing onto­log­i­cal quan­daries this rais­es with have to be dis­cussed at anoth­er time.

All that’s left is the Mar­vel fac­to­ry, which will kick man­u­fac­tur­ing into over­drive over the com­ing decade. There will be approx­i­mate­ly two zil­lion TV shows, includ­ing spin­offs for Hawk­eye, Moon Knight, She-Hulk, as well as ter­tiary char­ac­ters from Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Thor. There will be an Armor Wars series, in which Iron Man’s armor falls into the wrong hands, and an Iron­heart series, in which some oth­er guy takes up the man­tle of Iron Man. The hope is that togeth­er, they will equate to one (1) Robert Downey Jr.

A What If? series will use ani­ma­tion to explore alter­nate uni­vers­es revis­ing the Mar­vel lore, a Secret Inva­sion series will mix espi­onage and aliens, and the Guardians of the Galaxy will deliv­er a hol­i­day spe­cial in time for next Christ­mas. Their cud­dliest mem­ber, the diminu­tive tree known as Baby Groot, will star in his own series of ani­mat­ed shorts so adorable they sim­ply make you want to die. Or maybe that’s just how unstop­pable indus­try dom­i­nance feels.

And that’s not even account­ing for all the fea­tures: the long-delayed Black Wid­ow will arrive in 2021, as will a kung-fu epic focused on the mar­tial arts mas­ter Shang-Chi. The fol­low­ing year will bring a sec­ond Doc­tor Strange, a sec­ond Black Pan­ther, and the fourth film in the Thor series. In the future beyond that, we’re look­ing at a sec­ond Cap­tain Mar­vel, a third Ant-Man, and the umpteenth attempt to make the Fan­tas­tic Four work on the sil­ver screen. (Jon Watts, the film­mak­er respon­si­ble for the recent Tom Hol­land-star­ring Spi­der-Man films, will be at the helm to imbue the film with his inim­itable artis­tic touch.) Oth­er tal­ents soon to be ground up in this vast machin­ery of homo­gene­ity include Chloe Zhao, direc­tor of space opera The Eter­nals, and Maher­sha­la Ali, star of a planned Blade reboot.

So, for those keep­ing tabs, that’s 67 projects men­tioned in the para­graphs above, and that’s not even all of it. (BJ Novak, a for­mer staffer on The Office, has writ­ten ​“an inno­v­a­tive script­ed anthol­o­gy that uses the bold­est issues of our times as a jump­ing-off point to tell sin­gu­lar, char­ac­ter-dri­ven sto­ries about the world we live in today” called Plat­form.) Does this cav­al­cade of announce­ment fore­tell some grim Orwellian future in which an ever-increas­ing per­cent­age of total cre­ative out­put gets gob­bled up by the shiny flat sex­less­ness that is Disney’s stock-in-trade? Let’s put it this way: did Disney’s stock price rock­et almost twen­ty points yesterday?