This morning, Disney officially announced a release date for Wreck-It Ralph 2. There's only one problem -- that release date was already taken by another Disney animated feature. So what happens now? Disney's take on Jack and the Beanstalk, Gigantic had already been set for the same March 9, 2018, date that Ralph 2 has now taken. As a result, Gigantic has been officially pushed back, but luckily not very far. The new date for that film is November 21, 2018.
Last year at Disney's D23 expo we got our first look at Disney's Gigantic. Originally, the film was announced as a 2018 release, and later it was given the March 9 date. However, today in a very public announcement on Facebook, the directors, and the star, of Wreck-It Ralph 2 told us that film will now be released on that date. We received clarification shortly after as a press release sent by Disney also included the detail that Gigantic will now see a Thanksgiving release.
What Disney looks to be setting up is a release schedule in 2018 that looks a lot like the one they have this year. Zootopia was released this past March, on the same weekend that Wreck-It Ralph 2 will have in 2018. Disney is also planning a major animated release for Thanksgiving weekend this year, with their next princess-focused film, Moana. In addition, Summer 2016 saw the release of a major Pixar sequel that is currently owning the box office, Finding Dory. The same thing is very likely to happen in two years, as that's when we'll see Toy Story 4. Whatever Disney has done this year is the kind of success that every studio wants, replicating the release schedule is one of the easiest ways to attempt to recapture that magic.
If there's a significant downside to the Gigantic delay, it's that it will likely be that much longer before we get much detail about the film. Gigantic's director promised us a "definitive" version of the classic Jack and the Beanstalk tale. He compared the film's emotional impact to Dumbo. Statements like that, combined with the fact that the movie will have music from the pair that brought us the Frozen soundtrack, has been setting up Gigantic to be a film as big as its title. We're really curious to see how it all turns out. The only thing we've seen outside of the image above, is a joke DVD cover used in Zootopia .
Are you happy to see Wreck-It Ralph 2 first, or would you rather have seen Gigantic keep its release date and push Ralph further down the calendar? Let us know in the comments.
