The Walt Disney Company has dated out a movie calendar that runs clear through 2031, stacking sequels, live-action remakes and long-delayed blockbusters into one of the fullest release slates Hollywood has assembled in years.
“The blockbuster success of the latest TOY STORY installment shows exactly why Disney is different from the competition, and how our stories translate into recurring earnings power,” Josh D’Amaro, The Walt Disney Company’s chief executive officer, said in the studio’s Q3 FY26 earnings commentary released Wednesday.
D’Amaro pointed to the TOY STORY franchise as proof the strategy works. The franchise has crossed $4 billion in combined earnings and logged two billion streaming hours.
The rest of 2026 still has plenty left to unpack, with WHALEFALL, WILD HORSE NINE, HEXED and AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY among the titles set to hit theaters before the year is out. Disney formalized much of the calendar beyond that at CinemaCon in April, where the studio confirmed 2027 dates for ICE AGE: BOILING POINT, STAR WARS: STARFIGHTER, BLUEY: THE MOVIE, THE SIMPSONS MOVIE 2, FROZEN III and AVENGERS: SECRET WARS.
Further out, LILO & STITCH 2 and INCREDIBLES 3 land in 2028, with AVATAR 4 following in December 2029 and AVATAR 5 arriving in December 2031 — a schedule shaped years ago by director James Cameron’s insistence that each AVATAR sequel gets the time it needs.
Not every bet has paid off the same way. D’Amaro acknowledged as much in the same earnings commentary.
“Even when our franchise films don’t meet our box office expectations, as with THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU and the live-action MOANA, our investments in these core properties fuel other parts of our company,” he said, adding that MOANA is expected to find a second life as a strong performer on Disney+.
That candor tracks with what D’Amaro told Disney employees on his first day in the corner office back in March, after Bob Iger stepped aside and the board handed him the keys. “No one else can do what we do with the same combination of creativity, quality and global scale,” he wrote in a memo Movieguide® covered at the time, naming creative excellence his “North Star.”
Movieguide® has tracked this slate taking shape piece by piece for years, from Disney’s 2021 pledge to protect exclusive theatrical windows to a March report on several 2028 and 2029 dates the studio reserved for still-unnamed projects.
For parents, a calendar this long mostly reads as good news — familiar characters, family screenings on the schedule for years to come and less guesswork about what’s coming to a theater near them. It’s also a reminder that “family-friendly” still requires a second look.
Movieguide®’s own review of TOY STORY 5 found a movie that “strongly promotes traditional marriage” and models “good parenting, repentance, making amends, and helping others,” alongside a few moments of potty humor worth a heads-up for younger viewers. That mix — real virtue, minor caution — is likely to define plenty of what’s still ahead on Disney’s very long runway.
With a new chief executive steering the ship and franchises from TOY STORY to AVATAR locked in through the next decade, Disney is betting that nostalgia, scale, and the occasional swing for something new will keep families showing up. Movieguide® will keep watching each release as it arrives, offering families the discernment this slate is going to demand.
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