Disney Poised for Big Box Office in 2028 With ‘X-Men’, ‘Tangled’: D23

The morning after an intoxicating D23 Friday night, which included a dancing spirit squad, Adam Driver and Inde Navarrette X-Men surprises, Josh Gad crooning, Ryan Gosling, Anne Hathaway and confetti raining, it became really clear — Disney is going to have a killer 2028 at the box office.

And they haven’t even filled out the entire year’s slate yet. With the 2026 domestic box office racking toward an estimated $10 billion stateside, will people still be going to the cinemas two years from now?

Hell yes, if Disney has anything to do with it.

Disney has 14 dates currently in the Rentrak system for 2028 — and that’s not counting 20th Century Studios or Searchlight theatrical releases. Again, dates can always shed, but with the few tentpole dates that were announced last night at D23’s The Ultimate Disney Fan Event at the Anaheim Honda Center, coupled with what we already know, it would not be shocking if 2028 has a shot at rivaling Disney’s record global year at the B.O., which was 2019 with $13.15B (that’s when they were fully merged with 20th Century Fox).

Right now for 2028, if the studio can keep these productions on track, Disney has dated:

Pixar original Ghost Market – March 10
Currently, no other wide release is dated against it.

Live-action Tangled – March 31
Amazon MGM Studios has a Chosen movie already on the schedule which is counter-programming to this highly anticipated feature adaptation of the 2010 animated pic. Tangled arrives in theaters a week ahead of Sony’s The Beatles – Four Films The Beginning on April 7, 2028.

Marvel’s untiled X-Men – May 5
The MCU returns to its formerly prized summer launchpad, three years after 2025’s Thunderbolts*. Who dare date against this revival? In the hands of Feige, it’s not like Bryan Singer’s old stuff. From the looks of last night, per Hugh Jackman’s beam-in, he ain’t coming back as Wolverine.

Live-action Lilo & Stitch 2 – Memorial Day weekend, May 28
Currently, Lionsgate has Resurrection of the Christ: Part Two on this date. Again, counter-programming skewing to an older adult religious demo. The two can co-exist, but depending on how successful Part One is (May 6, 2027), it would’t be shocking if Lionsgate changes their mind in the face of a five-quad sequel to a billion-dollar movie.

Pixar’s Incredibles 3 – June 16
Before D23, Disney already announced the Fathers Day weekend date for the threequel to one of the highest grossing animated movies of all-time (Incredibles 2 at $1.2B). The kids—Violet, Dash and Jack Jack—are the same height, but grown up in their superhero abilities as the conceit here is that they sneak out of the house more. No other major studio pics are versing Incredibles 3 yet.

Marvel’s Ghost Rider – announced for 2028 without a specific date on the Gosling starring, Shawn Levy directed feature, but a good guess is that it’s going to July 28 that year as Disney has that weekend on hold in Rentrak. If it is July 28, well, that’s the penultimate end of summer date where Deadpool & Wolverine, Brand New Day and Fantastic Four: First Steps have soared. You’d be crazy to date against this movie.

Marvel’s Black Panther 3 – Dec. 15, 2028
Clearly, the Christmas event movie of the year. Universal has an untitled tentpole dated five days later on Dec. 20.

That’s quite a killer lineup on paper alone, and more powerful from what’s already on deck in 2027 for Disney, which we’ll sift through below. Here’s some takeaways from last night’s fireworks:

Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Are No Longer in Superhero Fatigue

With three MCU titles dated for 2028, that’s absolutely clear, and with MCU Boss Kevin Feige involved in the success of Sony’s highest grossing movie of all-time, the Marvel Studios co-production Spider-Man: Brand New Day at $1.8B+, “It’s not about IP,” says one Disney executive talking about the success of that rival film. “It’s about making great movies. Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t successful because it’s a Spider-Man movie, it’s successful because it’s an excellent, fun movie.” That’s the plan for MCU going forward: Reliable and fun-filled filmmakers and talent like Ryan Gosling and Shawn Levy involved in Ghost Rider, and a murderers’ row of thespians in X-Men such as Driver, Obsession breakout Navarrette, Christopher Abbott and Samara Weaving, to name a few.

There was some cynicism from fans over the Avengers: Doomsday trailer that was released around San Diego Comic-Con, which is to be expected. You can’t spoil everything in a trailer for a highly anticipated sequel. Also, who isn’t going to watch this upside-down universe MCU movie where Iron Man‘s Robert Downey Jr. is Victor Werner von Doom? The clip released last night shows this is a more complex, sinister strategist than Josh Brolin’s crash-bang-boom baddie Thanos from the previous Avengers pics. Screams Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, “Answer me, Victor! Why did you do this?” Masses will want to know well into early 2027 in what’s an optimistic start to Disney’s 2027 box office year. Joker: Folie a Deux, this is not. And after the better-than-Barbenheimer success of The Odyssey and Brand New Day in the marketplace, it’s clear we won’t have a problem of two male fandom-charged properties like Doomsday and Dune: Part 3 getting in each other’s way. Both battalion boats will rise at the B.O.

Live Action Takes Of Disney Classics Aren’t Going Away
While Honda Center denizens last night could only get excited by less than a minute’s tease of Tangled, which showed Rapunzel’s long blonde hair and Kathryn Hahn briefly as notorious Mother Gothel, Disney isn’t bailing on bringing legacy animated classics into the flesh with even Moana recently falling off her surfboard with less than $300M at the global box office. Disney’s plan per sources going forward remains, of course, spacing out animated sequels from their live-action counterparts, as well as finding a unique way into beloved vault titles (i.e. a Bridesmaids-like spinoff of Cinderella from Akiva Schaefer with Stepsisters, not shown yesterday), the still-in-development punk rock Cruella 2 from Craig Gillespie starring Emma Stone, and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast-verse title, Gaston. Maleficent years ago was a great success for the studio. If that Sleeping Beauty spinoff taught Disney anything, it’s to approach live-action adaptations of the classics from the side in an edgy way rather than a full-on adaptation (i.e. Dumbo, Pinocchio, Snow White) with great filmmakers and sublime stars. Quite often, the old pics are dated in their morals and arrive with inherent themes which are more baggage than their worth for the studio when trying to pull in a pluralistic audience. Another lesson from Moana: Don’t make a carbon copy of the original animated pic. Better to vary it up with different musical numbers and deeper plots for fun’s sake. Also when it comes to non-Disney IP movies, the current motion picture administration is on the hunt for the next YA hit, which can easily fit into the Magic Kingdom’s sensibilities both spiritually and merchandising wise, read winning a big auction for Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures, a publishing phenomenon on the order of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Twilight Saga (no updates yesterday).

Animation Is Intact
With Frozen 3, a November 2029 date for Coco 2 and Incredibles 3, clearly Disney knows when it comes to making $1 billion hits, it never fails to make a sequel to a landmark hit. And ya gotta space ’em out. Frozen 3 arrives eight years after its previous chapter, Incredibles 3 is ten years later than its predecessor while Coco 2 will hit theaters 12 years after Coco. Disney kept their powder dry on what to expect on Coco 2 and Incredibles 3, showing very little footage. Essentially what we learned were plot reveals.

Original Walt Disney Animation title, Hexed, due out at Thanksgiving, about a young woman coming into her bewitching powers while facing off against a coven, looks like it can work, elevating the leading independent female sensibility that the studio’s princess toons are known for, while also being the flip side of a Disney princess. Walton Goggins as a wisenheimer three-eyed Southern cat, Beef Roger Crummchuk, to Hailee Steinfeld’s protag, Billie Doe, is very funny and very Goggins. Disney vet Jodie Foster in her first Disney animation voiceover role as the villain, Queen Celeste, is intriguing. Well played, casting.

But get ready for Frozen 3. At the last D23 two years, they merely teased concept art, but this year, Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel (Anna and Elsa) rocked a new song, “Frozen Heart” while Josh Gad brought down the house with a new 1970s love song-sounding ditty about Olaf’s new g.f., “Samantha”. Add in a new black icy witch villain with powers that could topple Elsa and more about the ice sister’s past, and we got a great Star Wars-like film on our hands. The Jennifer Lee-directed threequel hits theaters on Nov. 24, 2027.

If you want to build franchises, you have to make originals, and as we know in the current post-Covid space, sometimes that means opening at a significantly lower gross and playing out. Pixar has always won in the original space when they do their own twist on a genre (i.e. space with Wall-E, French movies with Ratatouille) and anchor it on an emotionally affecting lead character. Not an easy needle to thread (Elio), but it appears they have something as they venture into horror with Ghost Market about a fast talking kid who has a supernatural interaction at a lunch shop hidden away in a remote location on Oʻahu’s North Shore that serves lost spirits, stuck between life and death.

Mum’s the word on Avatar
There was no mention of the future of the Na’vi last night. Two movies remain on the release calendar, Avatar 4 for Dec. 21, 2029 and Avatar 5 for Dec. 19, 2031. As far as the fate of those pics, all we know is what franchise director James Cameron has said following the threequel’s $1.48 billion (the lowest in the franchise, but, hello, still an excellent gross for any movie). They’re “still floating out there.”

A New Hope for Star Wars?
Nothing new was announced, and this is the one label which requires the most resuscitation after Mandalorian and Grogu died this summer with $345M WW. Rather than getting lost in their heads on what to do with the Skywalkers or legacy characters after failing to take fans into hyperspace with 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, Lucasfilm opted to go anew with elements that create alchemy, read the comedic and story awe of director Levy, scribe Jonathan Tropper and the cool and hysterically funny Gosling in Star Wars: Starfighter. It looks amazing, like Gosling’s Driver from Drive in space amid some new cool sea-filled planets. There’s an older mentor-to-kid story, and a nod to the drag race aura that George Lucas wove from his teen days into American Graffiti and Star Wars: Phantom Menace. For any die-hard Star Wars fans, there’s a lot of call-back in the imagery, but the question is whether they’ll buy into something completely fresh. The box office comp here isn’t Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine ($211.4M domestic opening) which was working off a successful superhero comedy property, it’s more the spinoff of bigger IP, think 2016’s Fantastic Beasts coming off of Harry Potter ($74.4M domestic debut). There’s a lot of pressure on Levy and Gosling to truly take us to another galaxy far, far away next Memorial Day weekend.

Meanwhile, per newly appointed co-president, Dave Filoni, when it comes to an Adam Driver starring The Hunt for Ben Solo movies; fans, it’s not the movie you’re looking for, to quote Obi-wan Kenobi. Filoni told Deadline that when it comes to the next movie after Rise of Skywalker, “The force is not with us in that regard.”

This was the second time in the Disney fan confab’s history that they’ve wowed their future film and TV lineup at the Honda Centre (called D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event), taking what was once a filled theater-like presentation at the Anaheim Convention Center to what’s now an Ariana Grande-like concert spectacle with floating balloons, Broadway numbers and the entire arena doing “the wave” before the start of the show.