Hexed

[DisneyFan09]

I like the displays and especially the figure of Beef Roger Crummchuk. He looks appealing. And the storybook looks also nice.

[PatchofBlue]

I think they're walking a fine line with the three-eyed cat, but the payoffs will be tremendous if they can nail it, which they usually do. I'm hoping we'll get a voice cast confirmation for him, and for the MacBeth witches, before the weekend's up.

[Sotiris]

More from the D23 Expo. New stills, voice cast, and the villain were revealed.

https://x.com/DisneyAnimation/status/20 ... 6603190556
https://x.com/DisneyAnimation/status/20 ... 7421342025
https://x.com/laughingplace/status/2088484845781741585
https://x.com/ScottGustin/status/2088485987722924174
https://x.com/DrewDisneyDude/status/2088485762514002343

[Disney Duster]

Witch Queen looks so innocent.

[PatchofBlue]

The Witch Queen (I'm assuming that's Foster's character) sounds like a proper return to Disney villainy.

Goggins doesn't really move the needle for me either way, but I think just about anyone can come alive under the right conditions.

[Disney's Divinity]

Finally something interesting--referring to Jodie Foster's involvement and the new character.

[DisneyFan09]

Frankly, the new trailer that was shown was pretty much a revamped version of the teaser. But I still liked the new parts, like Billie and her mother walking the stairs, the reveal of the portal, the storybook (which looked from Shrek), Beef Roger Crummchuk and the witches. The song was catchy, too. If anything, it was a better trailer than it`s predecessor. And I liked the design for the witch. She looked way better and more appealing than Billie and her mother.

[Dis2d]

out of curiosity, is there are single male human character in entire film??? Feels like an all female cast and any males seems relegated to the journal and the 3 eyed cat and that's it. The cat is looking like THE male lead too.

curious to see if this will affect its box office, does it have 4 quadrant appeal? Seems doubtful it does.

will be curious to see if this movie outgrosses the underperforming Pixar Hoppers or not.

[Disney's Divinity]

It does look better than Floppers after this trailer at least. I mean, it still did before, but was very much in the air. Even if this ends up as mediocre as Wish in the end despite everything looking good going in, it still couldn't be worse than Hoppers. That film was more like Elio and Clay--should've never been greenlit to begin with.

[Disney Duster]

I searched Google and it said:

Pixar's Hoppers did not flop. It opened on March 6, 2026, to a stellar $46 million domestically and $88 million globally, marking the biggest opening weekend for a Pixar original movie since Coco in 2017. It went on to gross over $240 million worldwide.

Hoppers was so good and got such stellar reviews it was such a great thing that it got greenlit.

[Disney's Divinity]

Elemental was also a flop.

You know, it's just odd when you think about how Gigantic got cancelled back when. It looked worlds better than Clay, Hoppers, Elio, and Strange World ever did.... I can believe there were story struggles, but to me it shows the declining standards when even the weakest things that would've got the knife back then were far better than things that are skating through now.

Just a shame this isn't a musical, it does look better after that trailer. But with cold water from Clay to follow in a few years, probably doesn't matter if this one takes off to some degree.

[PatchofBlue]

'Hexed' Directors Fawn Veerasunthorn & Jason Hand on the Creative Process
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA7cp0GRMBY&t=1319s

Chat with directors. They start discussing the movie in earnest around the 10 minute mark.

A lot of the theories I've been spinning are starting to feel more substantive, like the probability that Alice was a witch herself and is hiding Billie from that world to escape some dark fate. Veerasunthorn talks about finding a photograph of her mother when she was much younger and seeing her in a rebellious phase and wanting to understand more about her in that way. Maybe Alice was one of the raven witches that we see in the trailer? My addition to that theory is now that the Witch Queen is Billie's grandmother.

They also talk about wanting a Disney heroine with some edge to her who makes flawed choices, contrasting against other recent Disney heroines, another thing that I'm really wanting to see in this movie.

[Disney's Divinity]

I hope not. The mother being a witch and a grandmother character being a pillar of the magical community actually would be like Halloweentown. I suppose if it's twist that the character doesn't discover the Queen is her grandmother til near the end or something, maybe. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the father would be the blood line and her mother remains nonmagical. The Witch Queen has a different skin color here.

And on that point, while I could see the Witch Queen being a misdirect antagonist from the actual villain, I guess her actually being the villain would follow the racist underpinning driving almost all of Disney's decisionmaking the past 5-10 years of having all their films with a person of color protagonist with a white villain (including remakes where they have to substantially alter to a laughable degree with a racebend like TLM and SW). I'm just surprised Tangled was spared.

[Sotiris]

New concept art from The Magic of Disney Animation at Disney's Hollywood Studios.

https://x.com/DrewDisneyDude/status/2097687815072985274
https://x.com/BoardwalkTimes/status/2097688133454155948

[PatchofBlue]

It looked once upon a time like Alice and Billie were going to be sharing most of their screentime while they went on this adventure together. From the promotional material released so far, though, it seemed like they were going to be on separate tracks. I'm wondering what will end up being the case in the finished film.

[Disney's Divinity]

The official trailer here.

It makes me surprisingly optimistic that this might be good. No matter who the villain may ultimately be, I like both possibilities. The poster is nice, too.

[PatchofBlue]

"That microwave had a family" got a respectable laugh out of me.

I'm also noting the Fantasia reference, which is one of the things that's making me hold out hope for this film. I'm also loving the mother-daughter dynamic as well as the general vibrance of the color palette.

I'd probably be a little more optimistic about this guy's chances if "Forgotten Island" had fared better and if "Wildwood" wasn't slated to earn more than like 10 dollars it's opening weekend. I think best case scenario is it'll do "Hoppers" numbers and Disney will just have to admit that there's a ceiling on how good their non-franchise films are going to do until they radically rework their business model.

[Disney's Divinity]

I would be happy to be wrong, but I'd be shocked if Wildwood was a big financial success. Covering cist with a little extra seems like the best to hope for for Laika films. I'd expect it's mostly taken in everything it's going to by Thanksgiving, when Hexed starts.

Who knows how Hexed will do, but I think its trailer has mostly done a decent job for the film. I don't expect anything massive for it either since WDAS always does an uphill climb sort of trek from movie to movie and they're still climbing up from where Chapek/Strange World left them. Surprises can happen though.

[PatchofBlue]

Disney’s ‘Hexed’ Team on Taking ‘Big Swings’ and Leaning Darker for the Animated Witch Tale
https://www.thewrap.com/creative-conten ... ared-bush/

There's a quote here that really dials in on why the aesthetic in particular is really speaking to me.

“That’s something with that Disney animation we typically don’t do. Certainly not for something that feels like a fairy tale,” said Bush about the modern setting. He explained that “Wreck-It Ralph” and “Zootopia” are the studio’s “set-in-the-modern-world” movies. But with “Hexed,” it was an opportunity to break tradition. To set a “once upon a time…” movie not in the distant past or some imagined, romantic version of history, but in the world we all experience today.

“It feels like we’re talking about something that’s happening right now. To be able to do that with these characters and then have them step into this other place, it’s really exciting,” said Bush. And to be clear, the world of Hexe is not set in some other time period. These are modern day witches, baby.

“I think it’s like, to me, Hexe feels so comfortingly Disney. We get to go into a magical world. We get to push the boundaries of what’s possible and play with expectation. We could have a three-eyed cat. To me, those are all the things that, as a kid, that’s what I’m gravitating towards,” said Dana Ledoux Miller, who first worked with Bush on the live-action “Moana” adaptation and then brought her into the studio to co-write and direct “Moana 2,” a process that involved transforming a six-part Disney+ series into a single, big-ticket-worthy cinematic event. (“Moana 2” made $1.05 billion at the global box office.)

Ledoux Miller continued: “But we also really ground it in modern day and I think we get to blend those two worlds in a way that we haven’t really done here before. That’s an exciting challenge because anytime you make a Disney animated movie, it’s a responsibility because you’re carrying 100 years of history and of amazing creative energy into this new movie you’re making. I think everyone in this studio wants to live up to that legacy. And so everybody every day is coming in and being like, I want to create Disney magic. And this time we’re actually making magic, but it’s been a really fun process. It’s hard to dream up what magic looks like in this place. What does it mean? How does it feel? We have to think about our effects artists are like, The magic is made out of this element, and that’s how it translates to the screen. Everyone here takes exceptional care in thinking through how the physics of everything works and how it’s grounded in reality but also feels elevated and special.”

D23 has also shared some insights from the creative team. More on keeping a realistic mother and daughter at the center of this movie, which is no doubt a soundbite that plays very well, but I'm holding out hope that it plays out in execution.

Inside Disney’s Hexed, a Mother-Daughter Adventure in a World of Witches
https://d23.com/inside-disneys-hexed-a- ... f-witches/

[Disney's Divinity]

One of the foreign trailers spoiled the fact that the High Watch (Jodie Foster) is the grandmother as expected. I hope she's not redeemed and remainds the villain, unlike Alma. I like Alma, of course (Bruno would've been the better lost villain design if they were going to go fullblown antagonist with anyone there), and that story worked for me, but I'd rather not repeat. Of course, they could make it work if--and I think this could be possible--that she's been possessed by some magic force a la Magnifico later in Wish, only perhaps it happened to her years prior and that's why the mother fled to the real world. I think that may be the case since movies tend to follow a trend of ideas as they release (like Ursula sort of accumulating some ideas from Sykes, the Witches of Morva, Ratigan, etc.) and then there's also a darkness that possesses someone in Halloweentown, which this film feels inspired by in many ways, along with The Owl House.

I love the brief shot of the High Witch in the crow-esque form late in the trailer. The three young witch characters sent after the protagonist reminds me of Kubo where the villain is also the grandparent, funny enough. Either way, this might be the first mother-daughter centered film that's actually decent perhaps? I did like the mother more after this trailer. Really the only other one I remember with a mother-daughter relationship as the focus was Brave and I...wasn't crazy about that movie. Loved Elinor's design (more in the concept art than the finished film, but still), but Merida's was terrible and I wasn't crazy about Merida as a character altogether. Magnifico, the High Witch, and the bat lady character in Moana 2 (hopefully the villain in 3), and a magical villain in Frozen 3 (probably *not* the character who interrupts the wedding, necessarily)...all good attempts at decent antagonists.