10 ‘Star Wars’ series, 10 Marvel series and more to debut on Disney Plus starting in 2021

Presaging a massive expansion of Disney Plus programming, Disney announced on Thursday at least 35 new titles from Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, Disney Animation and Pixar Animation will be coming to the streaming service starting in 2021.

Kareem Daniel, Disney’s new distribution chief, announced during the Disney Investor Day presentation that 10 “Star Wars” series, 10 Marvel series, and 15 Disney and Pixar Animation series will be coming to Disney Plus. He did not specific the time frame, and promised further specifics will be announced by executive chairman Bob Iger later in the presentation.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was idea of 10 “Star Wars” series, the most aggressive creative expansion of the franchise since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. To date, Disney has released five “Star Wars” feature films and one series, “The Mandalorian,” to Disney Plus, with at least three other series in various stages of development: One focused on Obi-Wan Kenobi with Ewan McGregor, one a “Rogue One” prequel series focusing on Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor, and a female-centric series from Leslye Headland (“Russian Doll”).

Notably, Daniel said nothing about new “Star Wars” feature films.

Marvel Studios, by contrast, has already announced eight titles for Disney Plus, almost all of which are in some stage of development or production. “WandaVision” will premiere on Jan. 15, and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and “Loki” are expected to debut in the first half of 2021 as well. The animated series “What If…?,” and live-action series “Ms. Marvel,” “Hawkeye,” “Moon Knight,” “She-Hulk,” and an untitled series focusing on Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury are all in the pipeline as well.

For animation, it was unclear whether Daniel’s announcement meant that Walt Disney Animation and Pixar Animation would be producing full-length series for Disney Plus, or continue creating a series of shorts for the service, like Pixar’s “Forky Asks a Question” and “SparkShorts,” already on Disney Plus.

Spinoffs on “Star Wars” fan favorite character Ahsoka Tano, “Ahsoka,” and “Rangers of the New Republic” will be coming to Disney Plus, Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy announced during Thursday’s Disney Investor Conference.

Rosario Dawson will star in “Ahsoka,” having made her debut as the character in “The Mandalorian” recently. Both new series are set within the timeline of “The Mandalorian.”

It was hardly the only bit of “Star Wars” news: Kennedy also announced new series “Andor,” starring “Rogue One’s” Diego Luna; “The Bad Batch,” a new animated series; and the fact that Hayden Christensen will be returning as Darth Vader opposite Ewan McGregor in “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” All the new series will be coming to Disney Plus.

The news comes as “The Mandalorian” ends its second season on Disney Plus in triumph and the most recent “Star Wars” feature film, 2019′s “The Rise of Skywalker,” endures a growing reputation as one of the worst of the 11 “Star Wars” movies to date. “The Rise of Skywalker” certainly wasn’t a financial failure — it grossed $1.07 billion worldwide — but it came well under astronomic expectations given its place as the concluding film in the Skywalker Saga, earning just over half the $2.07 billion global gross of 2015′s “The Force Awakens.”

And “The Rise of Skywalker” followed the truly disastrous fate of 2018′s “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which outright flopped and forced Disney to change its plan to release a new “Star Wars” movie every year. Other spinoff films were put into carbonite, and Disney paused all “Star Wars” features until an untitled film slated December 2022 would restart the saga. The COVID-19 pandemic subsequently forced the studio to push the return of “Star Wars” to movie theaters a full year, to December 2023.

Several creatives are attached to developing various “Star Wars” feature projects, including “The Last Jedi” director Rian Johnson, Marvel Studio chief Kevin Feige, “Thor: Ragnarok” director Taika Waititi and “Sleight” director J.D. Dillard with “Luke Cage” writer Matt Owens.

Alex Stedman contributed to this report.