D23: Highlights from Disney’s Live Action Presentation

Highlight from Disney’s Live Action Presentation at the D23 Expo

UPDATE: Check out photos from the live action presentation as well as from backstage below! You may even spot Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Time from Through the Looking Glass in one of the photos (hint: it’s in the second photo)! The original story follows:

The D23 Expo in Anaheim, California continued today with Walt Disney Pictures’ Live Action panel called “Worlds, Galaxies and Universes: Live Action at the Walt Disney Studios” presented by Disney chairman Alan Horn with a boatload of talent showing up to pimp their films. 

Director Jon Favreau was on hand to present his upcoming live action adaptation of Disney’s The Jungle Book, which opens in theaters on April 15, 2016, and he was joined by Ben Kingsley, Lupita Nyong’o, and Neel Sethi, the only live acton actor in the film, playing Mowgli. After taking about their roles, they revealed the first poster for the movie below. 

Next up was Alice Through the Looking Glassthe sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton-directed blockbuster hit. Returning from the original movie are Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonhan Carter as the Red Queen and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, and they announced that Sacha Baron Cohen plays a new character called Time whose powers allow Alice to visit the Wonderland characters at different times in their lives. Because of this, we’ll be seeing some of the characters’ prequel stories to the classic Lewis Caroll story of the same name.

Directed by James Bobbin (The Muppets), Alice Through the Looking Glass is scheduled for May 27, 2016.

Bryce Dallas Howard presented the first clip from Pete’s Dragondirected by David Lowery, which is scheduled for release on August 12, 2016, and we have a new logo that you can see above.

Mira Nair’s adaptation of Tim Crothers’ bestselling The Queen of Katwe was also part of the presentation with Nyong’o returning to the stage to talk about working with her co-star David Oyelowo in Kenya, but then they quickly moved onto Bill Condon’s musical Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson as Belle, Luke Evans as Gaston and Josh Gad as LeFou, basically with a message and quick song from the actors who are currently filming in London for its March 17, 2017 release.

After that, they then teased Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth installment directed by Norwegian filmmakers Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning (Kon-Tiki) with Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush returning as Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbosa as they face Javier Bardem’s Captain Salazar. Kaya Scodelario from The Maze Runner plays a new character called Carina Smyth, while Brenton Thwaites (Maleficent) plays another new character named Henry. One reveal is that Orlando Bloom will be returning as the popular Will Turner from the original trilogy.

They debuted the new logo above for the movie that will be released on July 7, 2017.

You can check out Silas Lesnick’s live blog of the presentation here and check out a recap of the Marvel Studios footage and concept art shown here.

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