Disney wrapped its biennial fan convention, D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, in Anaheim, California, on Sunday after three days that produced release dates, cast reveals and theme-park news across nearly every corner of the company. Held across the Anaheim Convention Center and the Honda Center from Aug. 14 to Aug. 16, the gathering is Disney's largest promotional showcase of the year, and this edition leaned heavily on 2027 and 2028 as the studio's next big release window.
The biggest reveal came from Marvel Studios, which showed the first footage from "Avengers: Doomsday," due in theaters Dec. 18, built around Doctor Doom unraveling timelines and unleashing an army of Sentinels. Marvel also confirmed the ensemble for its rebooted "X-Men," which arrives May 5, 2028, as the opening film of the studio's next production slate. Adam Driver will play the villain Mister Sinister opposite Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, with Kit Connor, Christopher Abbott as Professor X, Samara Weaving, Inde Navarrette as Rogue and Maya Boyd as Storm rounding out the cast.
Beyond Marvel, Disney's animation and live-action units set dates for a wave of sequels: "Frozen 3" arrives Nov. 24, 2027, built around a wedding and a new villain; "Zootopia 3" was confirmed onstage by stars Ginnifer Goodwin and Ke Huy Quan; and "Coco 2" is set for November 2029, with Benjamin Bratt reprising his role. On the live-action side, a "Tangled" remake is scheduled for March 31, 2028, and "Star Wars: Starfighter," directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Gosling, moves up to May 28, 2027.
A theme-park building boom
Disney's parks division matched the studio slate with a decade's worth of construction news. A Pixar-themed "Monstropolis" area is set to open at Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2027, and a "Villains Land" expansion at Magic Kingdom will add a Maleficent-themed coaster and an Evil Queen dark ride. Epcot's Spaceship Earth will undergo its first restoration in 20 years, and the Journey Into Imagination pavilion will bring back its longtime mascot, Dreamfinder. Disney Cruise Line unveiled the Disney Believe, arriving in 2027 with a Tinker Bell figure on its bow, alongside plans for an entirely new ship class by 2029.
International parks got attention too: Disneyland Paris will restore its "Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune" attraction and add a Scar animatronic to its Lion King show, while Tokyo Disneyland is building a reimagined "Space Mountain: Earthrise" developed with YouTuber-engineer Mark Rober, set to open in spring 2027.
Dwayne Johnson becomes a Disney Legend
The event's most personal moment came Saturday night, when Dwayne Johnson was inducted as a 2026 Disney Legend by his "Jungle Cruise" co-star Emily Blunt, who told the crowd that behind Johnson's larger-than-life persona she found someone "disarmingly wise, gentle, curious, and unpretentious." Johnson, whose acting career began after a stalled professional-football bid left him with $7 to his name, was inducted alongside former Disney chief executive Bob Iger.
"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."
Dwayne Johnson, accepting his Disney Legend honor at D23
Johnson is now among the highest-grossing box-office stars in history, with more than $15 billion in worldwide ticket sales credited to his films since transitioning from a career as a professional wrestler.
D23 has run every other year since 2009 as Disney's answer to Comic-Con, giving the company one stage to sell fans, park guests and investors on its coming slate at once. This year's edition arrived as Disney leans on its parks and streaming businesses to offset a choppier theatrical marketplace, and as Marvel narrows its film output around fewer, higher-stakes releases after years of franchise-fatigue complaints from critics and audiences. The next milestones arrive quickly: the Disney+ series "VisionQuest," starring Paul Bettany, premieres Oct. 14, followed by "Avengers: Doomsday" in December and the first Monstropolis attractions in 2027.
