It seems as if Walt Disney Animation Studios is getting off theDisney+train for the foreseeable future after years of supporting the streaming service. After the entertainment giant launched Disney+ in 2019, the storied animation house began putting content on the platform in 2020. This is seemingly no longer going to be the case going forward.
The House of Mouse will clearly keep pumping money intoDisney+as it continues its lofty ambitions of taking over Netflix as the leader in streaming entertainment. The production arm that started it all back in the 1920s—before hitting the big time in 1937 withSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs—has been putting original content on Disney+ for a few years now. Beginning with shorts collections likeHow to Stay At HomeandOlaf Presents, Walt Disney Animation Studios put their money where their mouths were and released twofull-fledged animated series on Disney+in 2022 withBaymax!andZootopia+.
The writing has been on the wall about theTianaseries for some time now. Clearly, the higher ups at Disney wanted to capitalize on the Splash Mountain attractions at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland getting a complete revamp asTiana’s Bayou Adventure. The timeframe to make the most of those changes has come and gone as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure opened at the Magic Kingdom in June 2024 while the Disneyland incarnation debuted in November of the same year.
The larger nail in the coffin came when theMoanaDisney+ miniseries was reworked into a theatrical release that earned over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office despite mixed reviews. Couple that success with theoutrageous haulInside Out 2pulled inearlier in the year, and it’s easy to see why this pivot was made. Why would Disney keep forcing their animation houses to shuttle content to a streaming service when piles of cash can be made at theatres instead?
Now, theTianaseries has been in some form of production for over four years. Perhaps Disney will pull aMoana 2and turn whatever they have put together into a long-awaited sequel to 2009’sThe Princess and the Frog. This seems somewhat more unlikely as Walt Disney Animation Studios hasn’t released a hand-drawn film since 2011’s box office flopWinnie the Pooh. Nothing is stopping the creative minds at Disney from creating aTiana-based sequel in computer-animated 3D, but it seems like that might be a weird shift for fans to accept.
In any case,Disney+will continue gettingplenty of Marvel andStar Warscontentfor years to come, so it is doubtful the big-wigs at the House of Mouse are too worried.
