D23 Expo News & Announcements

For the last week I’ve been out in California geeking out Disney-style by visiting Disneyland and attending all 3 days of the D23 Expo. These types of events always provide opportunities to see and do awesome things and this one is no different. In the first two days there were keynote events. Here’s what we saw!

At the Pixar/Animation Event:

• Bob Iger came out and did the Keynote, then handed it off to John Lasseter, CCO of Pixel, et al.
• Bill Hader came out thrice to promote movies he’s in: Monsters U, The Good Dinosaur, and Inside Out
• They premiered the short that will play ahead of the Pixar movie The Good Dinosaur, called Monster’s University: Party Central
• Speaking of, their next movie (after Frozen) will answer the question, “What if the asteroid missed Earth?” It will come out May 2014 and stars John Lithgow, Judy Greer, Bill Hader, Nick Lucas, and Neil Patrick Harris! Bill, Judy, and Nick made an appearance to talk about the movie.
• They also showed clips/early art from a new movie, Inside Out, which focuses on what goes on with your emotions when something happens to you. The movie starts Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, and Phyllis Smith. The latter two made an appearance. This movie looks absolutely hysterical. I can’t wait for it to come out in 2015.
• Production has started for Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo. It takes place 1 year after Finding Nemo ends. Dory, who is living with Marlin and Nemo, gets a bad feeling that something happened to her family and sets out to find them without telling Marlin and Nemo; thinking she’s lost, they set out to find her. 2 new characters that were announced for the movie are Dory’s parents, voiced by Dian Keaton and Eugene Levy.
• John Ratzenberger (Pixar’s Lucky Charm) showed up with a marching band!
• We saw the first 10 minutes of Pixar’s first TV episode, a Halloween short called Toy Story of  Terror. It will be on ABC Oct 16th at 8pm EST.
• 2 new Tinkerbell movies were announced, Legend of the Neverbeast, and The Pirate Fairy. The latter stars Christina Hendricks and Tom Hiddleston, both of whom showed up. Tom even sang for us!
• We also took a look at Planes and next year’s sequel, Planes: Fire and Rescue. Dane Cook made an appearance.
• We took early looks at 2 movies, Big Hero 6, a superhero comic book movie, and Zootopia, which takes place in a world where humans never existed and Animals built a metropolis in which to live. This concept looks awesome! Can’t wait for it to come out in 2016.
• Finally, we took a look at Frozen, which comes out November of this year. It’s about 2 sisters, voiced by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel. They are heiresses to a kingdom, but Idina’s character had a magical power to freeze things she touches. Josh Gadd also stars in it as a snowman from the girls’ childhood. Both Kristen and Josh showed up to talk about the show, and Idina closed out the event by singing the title song from the movie, called, “Let it Go.” That was incredible!

At the Live Action/Marvel/Lucasfilm Event: First, there was little-t0-no info about Star Wars. I was disappoint.

• We did, however, see 2 exclusive clips for Thor: The Dark World. Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, and Sir Anthony Hopkins showed up to talk about the film!
• We also saw exclusive first clips from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which looks great as well.n Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, and Chris Evans showed up to talk about the movie!
• Finally (regarding Marvel), the showed a 2 week cut from Guardians of the Galaxy (out 8/2014) and a teaser for Avengers: Age of Ultron, set for release Summer of 2015.
• We got a sneak peak at the new Muppets movie, Muppets Most Wanted. It stars Tiny Fey, Ricky Gervais, and Ty Burrell and focuses around an international thief who looks just like Kermit. Ty Burrell showed up! It will be out Spring of 2014.
• We also heard about Into the Woods, a movie based on the musical starring Meryl Steep, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick, Emily Blunt, and more. It will be out Christmas 2014.
• We got a look at live action versions of both Cinderella and Maleficent. Cinderella has a bang-up cast including Cate Blanchett and Helena Bonham Carter. That is still in early planning stages.
• Maleficent will be out July 2014 and stars Angelina Jolie, who looks absolutely fantastic in the role. It gets Maleficent’s side of the story and rumor has it we may even be rooting for her by the end! As an added bonus, Jolie actually showed up to talk about the movie!
• Finally, we got a look at two Disney based historical movies. The first one is called Tomorrowland starring George Clooney. It focuses on a box in the Disney Archives labeled 1952, which includes a lot of handwritten plans by Walt himself and asks the question, “What If?”
• The second is one we’ve seen trailers for; Saving Mr. Banks, a movie about Walt’s persistent pursuit to get the rights to Mary Poppins. We got an extended first look at the movie, out this December, and BJ Novak and Jason Schwartzman came out to talk about the movie and performs some songs, with a surprise appearance by Richard Sherman himself!