The D23 Conference is a yearly meeting between Disney executives and fans to announce new movies and additions to Disney parks across the globe. While it is interesting, it shows a lack of love for their most beloved characters.
At this year’s D23 conference, Disney confirmed work on several reboots and sequels to beloved movies and franchises, like “Moana 2”, “Toy Story 5” and “Frozen 3”, among many others.
One of the only original movies they announced is the movie “Elio”, which has a thinly veiled plot. Though limited promotional material is out, people should wait on the yet to be released movie. It has promise as a Disney original.
While Disney and Pixar fans cry out to Disney to go back to their roots and make original movies, Disney is only interested in the money. All the new movies are raking in more than their originals. According collider.com, “Despicable Me” made about 848 million dollars in the box office. “Despicable Me 4” made 885 million dollars in the box office. “Toy Story” made around 395 million dollars when it was released back in 1995. “Toy Story 4”, what some point to as a shameless cash grab by Disney, having little character development outside of one moderately interesting plot twist, made over a billion in theaters.
All of this remake and sequel talk from Disney is coming after the actor’s and writer’s guild strike started just months prior, where Disney, Universal and video game companies wanted to start using AI voices and artists for their games and movies and pay workers less. While AI is a great tool that is obviously not going anywhere in the modern world, it should be used to help and not be used as a tool to pay workers less. AI can create what we want it to, but only human-made art and audio can actually have a soul. Many also call for the removal of AI art generation sites, as the art it creates is just scalped and mangled from other human artists and creators without credit.
D23 has just exemplified that Disney and other movie creators are trying to save as much money as possible while creating less and less original stories because they would rather see big box office numbers then see their characters into this new modern age with a more aware consumer.
