Disney unveils plans for Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar at D23 panel Transcript

Brad: (00:05)
Disney share details about its upcoming projects at its D23 Expo over the weekend. Getting fans all excited and riled up about the road ahead. Yahoo finances, Alexandra Canal is here with the details. Ally

Alexandra Canal: (00:17)
That’s right, Brad. D23 was alive and well. You’d be surprised. Some of these fans were waiting outside since five in the morning to get into some of these presentations. I was blown away by the entire process. But one thing that stuck out to me was that Marvel and Lucasfilm studio showcase. There were a lot of big announcements. The moment that I want to talk about was when Harrison Ford surprised the audio audience in tears, after a sneak peak of the upcoming Indiana Jones movie. Number five in that franchise. The film will come out June 30th, 2023. He did joke that this will definitely be his last go around as Indiana Jones. He is 80 years old after all. But I will say that that sneak peak looked very good, had a standing ovation. There was a lot to look forward to there. Then what you’re seeing on your screen now is some other announcements from both Lucasfilm and Marvel. On the Lucasfilm side, the studio touted the upcoming debuts of several Disney+ original shows like Willow, the Star Wars series, Skeleton Crew and Andor.

Alexandra Canal: (01:19)
Then on the Marvel side, a slew of new shows coming to the platform, Echo, Daredevil: Born Again, just to name a few. This is a really big commitment on the part of CEO, Bob Chapek. He emphasized that Disney+ is a really strong component of the company. He told the Hollywood Reporter that Disney won’t be slowing down its content spend. He truly believes that Disney+ can be the start of a lot of franchise growth for the company. In fact, he said the company, “Dramatically underestimated the hungry beast that is Disney+, and how much content it needed to be fed.” The subscriber numbers really just speak for themselves while Netflix and Peacock and some of those other platforms have either lost subscribers or those subscriber numbers stalled, Disney actually be expectations in the latest quarter. 14.4 million net editions versus the estimated 10 million. We’ll see how those subscriber numbers play out once the platform introduces an ad supported tier in December.

Alexandra Canal: (02:18)
Then finally, one last thing from D23. The crowd went wild over the casting of the Thunderbolts. This is that new antihero Marvel film. We got Florence, Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a super A-list cast. This movie will begin filming next year and we’ll conclude the studio’s phase five release plan. So the box office for Marvel doing well. The next big film we got on deck is Wakanda Forever out November 11th.

Speaker 3: (02:47)
Thanks so much, Ally. Appreciate it. Appreciate reporting out there.