Disney reveals future of Marvel, Star Wars, and Avatar releases post-Fox purchase

Disney’s slate of upcoming live-action and animated films following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox is just as enormous as one might expect.

Over the course of the next eight years, Disney will release close to 65 films from its various divisions: Marvel Studios, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Disney Animation, Disney Originals and, of course, Fox. The last movie on Disney’s slate is Avatar 5, the final film in James Cameron’s sprawling epic franchise based on the world he first introduced in 2009’s Avatar.

Most of the films that appear on the slate, which can be seen in the tweet above, are already announced, but there are a couple of surprises. Lucasfilm will return with live-action Star Wars movies in 2022. Disney CEO Bob Iger recently told investors Disney was going to slow down on production of Star Wars films following Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which comes out this December. On the Marvel side, only two new films will be released next year — a surprise considering Marvel generally aims for three movies a year. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 being pushed back may explain why there’s an absent film, though.

The company’s slate also highlights some contributions from 21st Century Fox’s studios, including a new untitled Kingsman movie in 2020 and confirmation that The New Mutants, the troubled X-Men property, is still set to be released on April 3, 2020. Avatar 2 will also be released in 2021, according to this list. Based on the way the films are laid out, Disney plans to use the Avatar films and future Star Wars installments intermittently as big holiday movies every December.

The slate does an excellent job of reiterating just how big Disney’s catalogue of films is following the Fox acquisition, and just how much of the calendar year the studio will control at the box office going forward. The next big movie set to be released by Disney is Guy Ritchie’s live-action Aladdin, which will be released on May 24.