DVDizzy Forum

Sotiris wrote: ↑Thu Nov 27, 2025 7:15 am

Next fall, Disney Animation will release “Hexed,” an original film about an awkward teenager who discovers that he’s a wizard. “He’s pulled into a world of magic and realizes, oh, these are his people,” Mr. Bush said. “Spoiler,” he added. “Mom, who’s also trying to figure herself out, is tied to him. So it’s a mother-son buddy comedy.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/busi ... -bush.html

Im expecting this to do Strange World & Wish numbers. There doesnt seem to be some sort of charm or striking uniqueness to both the visual world and the overall synopsis. Its just a mix of modern IPs and most strikingly The Owl House.

What i was thinking lately is that the filmmakers at WDAS are constantly looking back at its legacy, desperately trying to make movies that are not too bold or different from their catalogue. Parallels to the little mermaid documentary i rewatched recently where Jeffrey Katzenberg was critizising the crew worrying "what would Walt Disney do and how would Ariel compare to Cinderella and Aurora?" and him telling them "We're not Walt, we have to be US and find our own way" and push forward. I mean imagine Mermaid not having thst bold Broadway Pop Soundtrack or Ariel having a more classic and conservative personality like Aurora yikes. Seems like nowadays the studio completely abondened that mindset and only wants to capture the essence of the past. Just throwing a boy as a protagonist to a mediocre setting and repetitive arc and storyline wont make them win their male audiences. If theyre so desperate with their legacy and a potential male audience, why cant they use their brains and draw Inspiration to Aladdin or their other successful male led successful musicals?! I guess the company forgot atp that Aladdin was the lead in his self titled movie with only Jasmine "Disney princessifying" the brand with her leading the Marketing the last few decades.

If Gigantic would have been released in 2018 (and untoubtfully been a success), they would have been reminded that male Fairytales exists and work too... RIP Gigantic

I'm not sure what I expect box office-wise. It's more interesting than Strange World, but a wizard story doesn't feel "Disney," tbh, even though I'm personaly open to it even if I'd be more interested if it was a musical. Wish's numbers were likely a reflection of Stramge World, which means the numbers here will be more on Wish. I could see a slight gain from Wish's numbers, but not by much. I was more optimistic about Wish going into thst film because I didn't think one misfire (SW) would have that much of an impact that they couldn't come back from. But I think to a degree Wish also took some of the anger over the Snow White and TLM racebending since the protagonist was a character of color as well. I know I had conservative relatives who would roll their eyes when I talked about the film since I was excited by the concept art and all that, saying things like of course the lead had to be a poc because everything at the time (even remakes like Snow White and TLM where the characters had specific looks or story details that were abandoned to make room for a poc protagonist) had to feature a poc as the lead. It wasn't just a Disney-specific thing, but more generally aimed at the film industry at the time, although Disney did have more of a bull's-eye on them.

The Disneynerd wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 4:19 am

Sotiris wrote: ↑Thu Nov 27, 2025 7:15 am Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/busi ... -bush.html

Im expecting this to do Strange World & Wish numbers. There doesnt seem to be some sort of charm or striking uniqueness to both the visual world and the overall synopsis. Its just a mix of modern IPs and most strikingly The Owl House.

What i was thinking lately is that the filmmakers at WDAS are constantly looking back at its legacy, desperately trying to make movies that are not too bold or different from their catalogue. Parallels to the little mermaid documentary i rewatched recently where Jeffrey Katzenberg was critizising the crew worrying "what would Walt Disney do and how would Ariel compare to Cinderella and Aurora?" and him telling them "We're not Walt, we have to be US and find our own way" and push forward. I mean imagine Mermaid not having thst bold Broadway Pop Soundtrack or Ariel having a more classic and conservative personality like Aurora yikes. Seems like nowadays the studio completely abondened that mindset and only wants to capture the essence of the past. Just throwing a boy as a protagonist to a mediocre setting and repetitive arc and storyline wont make them win their male audiences. If theyre so desperate with their legacy and a potential male audience, why cant they use their brains and draw Inspiration to Aladdin or their other successful male led successful musicals?! I guess the company forgot atp that Aladdin was the lead in his self titled movie with only Jasmine "Disney princessifying" the brand with her leading the Marketing the last few decades.

If Gigantic would have been released in 2018 (and untoubtfully been a success), they would have been reminded that male Fairytales exists and work too... RIP Gigantic

I honestly think Disney need to make more older male protagonist like Aladdin, Milo, or Jim Hawkins. I don't want to make any assumptions on the male mc age for hex, but he's giving me tweens vibes.

The Disneynerd wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 4:19 am

Sotiris wrote: ↑Thu Nov 27, 2025 7:15 am Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/busi ... -bush.html

Im expecting this to do Strange World & Wish numbers. There doesnt seem to be some sort of charm or striking uniqueness to both the visual world and the overall synopsis. Its just a mix of modern IPs and most strikingly The Owl House.

What i was thinking lately is that the filmmakers at WDAS are constantly looking back at its legacy, desperately trying to make movies that are not too bold or different from their catalogue. Parallels to the little mermaid documentary i rewatched recently where Jeffrey Katzenberg was critizising the crew worrying "what would Walt Disney do and how would Ariel compare to Cinderella and Aurora?" and him telling them "We're not Walt, we have to be US and find our own way" and push forward. I mean imagine Mermaid not having thst bold Broadway Pop Soundtrack or Ariel having a more classic and conservative personality like Aurora yikes. Seems like nowadays the studio completely abondened that mindset and only wants to capture the essence of the past. Just throwing a boy as a protagonist to a mediocre setting and repetitive arc and storyline wont make them win their male audiences. If theyre so desperate with their legacy and a potential male audience, why cant they use their brains and draw Inspiration to Aladdin or their other successful male led successful musicals?! I guess the company forgot atp that Aladdin was the lead in his self titled movie with only Jasmine "Disney princessifying" the brand with her leading the Marketing the last few decades.

If Gigantic would have been released in 2018 (and untoubtfully been a success), they would have been reminded that male Fairytales exists and work too... RIP Gigantic

That's the tricky part of the game, though. Any movie is going to inevitably be part-imitation and part-innovation, and the official story can be really inconsistent with how it designates these things. It's kind of like how I remember people hailing THOR RAGNAROK as being a gamechanger for the MCU when after I saw it, all I could think was "Ah, so I see that Marvel has decided to take the wrong lessons from Guardians of the Galaxy." Commentators will want to say that the most innovative films will inevitably be rewarded, but really it has a lot more to do with which films tell people what they want to hear.

Disney was absolutely trying to fit a mold when they set FROZEN as a CG fairy-tale musical ... and they also let themselves play with the formula by overtly rebuffing certain tropes. But the larger journalistic body definitely paid more attention to Disney publicly playing to the anti-princess crowd. But if people who loved Tangled hadn't shown up for FROZEN, the narrative would have been that Disney was trying to play it too safe by forcing another princess movie on us all.

A male-centered wizard Disney film sounds exciting to me. Too bad it won't be hand drawn.

Disney Duster wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 10:58 pm A male-centered wizard Disney film sounds exciting to me. Too bad it won't be hand drawn.

How do you know it won’t be? Have they confirmed that?

DisneyJedi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 11:35 pm

Disney Duster wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 10:58 pm A male-centered wizard Disney film sounds exciting to me. Too bad it won't be hand drawn.

How do you know it won’t be? Have they confirmed that?

I mean, there is no sign that hand drawn animation is coming back to Disney anytime soon sadly. I think all of their veterans 2d animators have let the company and Disney haven't assembled a team of 2d animators because they don't have a lot of people who can do it.

reee9948 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 29, 2025 12:01 am

DisneyJedi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 11:35 pm

How do you know it won’t be? Have they confirmed that?

I mean, there is no sign that hand drawn animation is coming back to Disney anytime soon sadly. I think all of their veterans 2d animators have let the company and Disney haven't assembled a team of 2d animators because they don't have a lot of people who can do it.

To be fair, Eric Goldberg is still there and Ron Clements (or John Musker) returned as a mentor for future animators unless I’m mistaken.

Personally, if not hand-drawn, I’d like it if they go with a legit stylized CGI style that actually blends the medium with something like 2D, like Paperman. Because with what they went with for Wish, while it does look like a moving storybook illustration with a watercolor “aesthetic”, that’s just a “filter” they went with.

Ron Clements returned but not to guide them in animation. Ron hasn't animated since the '80s. He returned to be a story consultant.

This three eyed chesire creature may be the villian of the movie.

Are those the Zootopia 2 end credits?

I sincerely hope Hexed turns out to be a good movie, with the quality of a 90s or 2000s Disney movies. I thought Zootopia 2 was going to be a great movie since the critics were raving about it, but it was pretty average. I think the only reason why the movie was well received because it's better than the other movies Disney released recently which is not a good indicator of the quality.

I don't have high expectation for this movie as I had for Wish. I genuinely thought Wish was going to bring a new renaissance age for Disney, but we all know how that turned out. However, since the movie has a villain and it's set in a magical world, the movie might surprise me in a good way, who knows.

Having watched Puss in Boots: One Last Wish now, I can see how both it and now KPOP Demon Hunters are being modeled for their current new properties. They said something recently about pursuing a more anime-esque look--obviously because of Demon Hunters' massive success. I know Wish's look felt like it was trying to go gor something similar to both those films (and Spider-verse). Not surprising it was the one thing praised about Wish, although I hope they continue to develop it further along to look as pretty as those films do. Just ironic to me that hand-drawn combo in a Paperman-style look is what those films are and what audiences are gravitating to, and yet the studio that mastered both hand-drawn for almost a century and created the Paperman look in the first place is playing catch up. Maybe if they hadn't completely done away with hand-drawn, they wouldn't be in this mess. They could've been putting out a hand-drawn film every 4-5 years between their 3D films and sequels while also developing ways for it to improve their 3D, which could've had them at the forefront of the shift instead. And make it easier / cheaper for them to pump out streaming content to boot.

I think those films are also partly why they attempted a villain again in Wish. Too bad they didn't make Magnifico more serious and genuinely threatening as the film went along like Death in the PiB film though (or have a darker villain behind him as I think they were originally going to do with Amaya). I can see the ways they tried to raise stakes (when Magnifico destroys Asha's mother's wish), they just didn't go far enough. Anyway, it gives me hope that Hexed could potentially have an interesting look in the vein of Wish and those films, and there are already signs of a villain people have pointed out.

For a long time they coasted on audiences being wowed simply by how realistic 3D could look, but they've finally reached the point they need to wow stylistically again, the way almost every '90s film had its own distinct look. It id hard to be excited at the moment, but I think they're at least going in a decent direction now even if Hexed may not be the film that is a full materialization of a better vision yet. The only thing I don't get is PiB and KPDH also show people like fairy tales / myth, musicals, drama, and romance. If only they would embrace those things again.

There are designs out. Apparently they changed the lead from a boy to a girl, which is a letdown. It would've been nice to have a film with a male lead that was fantastical and not some sci-fi nonsense. Changing the gender, it feels like a repeat of lead female character with powers. :/ But I guess Raya, Mirabel, and Asha were all powerless, so there's been a break between, I suppose.

I hate the mother's design, they could've come up with much better than that. The lead's design might grow on me. The face is generic Moana/Raya/Asha/etc. I sort of like the braid going out though, and the hood makes you think of Red Riding Hood in a way. These two characters with a Cheshire Cat villain... Could be decent if there's a good plot. I just hope they work on the mom's design.

I just wonder who the voice cast will be.

The girl looks like Anna/Elsa with a different hair. The mother looks like she's from an Illumination movie.

In Hexed, an impulsive and unconventional teenage girl named Billie (voiced by Steinfeld) discovers secret magical abilities which, once unleashed, hurtle her into a spectacle-filled journey out of suburbia and into a vast witch realm called Hexe. Forced to team up with her cautious mother, Alice (voiced by Jones), they uncover family mysteries that could change the world of witches forever. Directed by Fawn Veerasunthorn and Jason Hand, co-directed by Josie Trinidad, and produced by Roy Conli, Disney’s Hexed opens exclusively in theaters November 25.

https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/news/c ... 026-recap/

Wow, this was heavily retooled in such a short amount of time. They changed the sex of the lead and aged them up. They changed the look of the mom too who was originally going to be blonde. The tone of the film seems to have changed as well. It looks more comedic than before. The whole thing resembles a Disney Channel movie more now.

I wonder why they decided to change this from a mother-son movie to a mother-daughter one. I feel that mother-daughter stories are much more common in media whereas we don't see mother-son ones as often. Perhaps they got nervous having a male lead since their last male-led film, Strange World, flopped hard. I also got the impression that the male lead wouldn't have been your typical masculine little boy, so perhaps they gender-swapped him to avoid controversy, similar to their concerns surrounding Pixar's Elio. It's also possible they got influenced by the success of K-Pop: Demon Hunters and decided to turn this into a magical girl-power movie in the hopes it would find similar success.

It's also noteworthy that Josie Trinidad got demoted to a co-director. We haven't had a director of a WDAS film get demoted to co-director since Raya and the Last Dragon. What I don't understand is why they would entrust Fawn Veerasunthorn of all people with the direction of another WDAS movie after the massive failure of Wish.

I agree about the character designs. The mom looks too cartoony and exaggerated. The expression on the daughter is too reminiscent of Elsa's famous clipart. But the most off-putting thing for me is their body proportions. They look like stick figures. This is how other studios like Illumination or DreamWorks usually design human characters, not Disney. That's a big letdown for me.

Both characters look like taken from a Netflix animated production. Honestly I don't find them attractive so right know I don't have much enthusiasm for this movie.

I like the voice actors they chose here. Still hate the mother's design--and it's another case where they clearly picked the actor and then designed the character rather than designing a character then picking an actor. The choice to have the lead be younger maybe deliberate to parallel Alice in Wonderland since they have the Cheshire Cat-esque character.

Now if they could retroactively make this a musical (and with someone better than Julia Michaels... P&P, the Lopezes, Menken, or Miranda) along with all the other changes, I could see it having a moderate chance. TBH, the gender change was probably for the best, it was originally giving a HP vibe, which would've been odd. Although it probably would've been more like Elio--but even Elio didn't even get to be Elio in the end. But there's still the problem of having a character from a normal world go into a strange one thst is a boring concept--the thing that tanks most sci-fi films. It works better when the strange comes into the normal world a la Lilo & Stitch, The Iron Giant, or even TLM (Ariel in the human world).