'Tiana' Series Scrapped At Disney+ As Walt Disney Animation, Pixar Get Out Of Streaming Productions Bigger Than Shorts, Specials

The project has turned into a frog and croaked after 5 years

There’s a kiss of death going on at Walt Disney Animation Studios. The Tiana series announced for Disney+ at Disney Investor Day 2020 that would continue the adventures of the Princess of The Princess and the Frog has been canceled as the studio moves out of making original longform content for streaming. No more Disney+-original movies or series will be coming from them. Not that there were many or any. And what a coincidence that this announcement comes just after the end of Black History Month, but also kneecapping their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives to escape Felon President’s wrath. Truly a coincidence.

This does follow Pixar’s own withdrawal, and results in layoffs in the WDAS Vancouver studio. Tiana, originally set for 2022 but kept getting pushed and now off the edge of a cliff, would’ve seen Anika Noni Rose reprise her role as the title princess as she explored New Orleans. Stella Meghie was announced as writer and director in November 2021, which would’ve made her the first African-American director to helm a Walt Disney Animation Studios project, but she was replaced by Joyce Sherri by October 2023. It sounds as if other changes to the creative team happened behind the scenes, but through it all, Tiana ultimately could not get to where it needed to be given production costs. It might be that work on the series had been going on for so long that it resembled film budgets ballooning for talent retention during COVID work stoppage.

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The Tiana series was not the only casualty, as there was an unannounced film for Disney+ that was also canceled. However that doesn’t mean Tiana, Naveen, and everyone else have been shafted out of new stories. Disney is now said to be in development on a separate shortform special. Plot details aren’t known, but it has Sherri attached as director and writer, with Steve Anderson also directing.

Of course, Tiana was greenlit at a time where investment in Disney+ meant stocking it with as many original projects as possible from as many company facets and assets as possible, and that meant Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios dabbling in the television format for the first time. For Pixar, that was Win or Lose, and for WDAS, that was Tiana and Moana: The Series. Moana: The Series was rejiggered into a theatrical feature film, still a sequel to the 2016 film, that was released in November, just nine months after said redevelopment was announced. It then went on to gross $1 billion at the box office, and will finally arrive on Disney+ next week, March 12.

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Source: The Hollywood Reporter