More than four years after the show was announced, it looks like a Disney+ sequel series to The Princess and the Frog is not happening after all.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has ended development on a Tiana streaming series “as it abandons making original longform content for streaming.” The show was first announced in December of 2020, at a time when Disney was putting a huge emphasis on new shows and films for its then-new streaming service, Disney+. (The Tiana show was announced at the same time as the Moana series — which was eventually reworked into the Moana 2 theatrical feature that opened in theaters last fall.)
THR’s sources claim that “despite best efforts, including several changes to the creative team, Tiana ultimately could not get to where it needed to be given production costs.”
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Disney released The Princess and the Frog (loosely based on the folk story “The Frog Prince” and the 2002 novel The Frog Princess) in 2009. It was the company’s first hand-drawn animated feature in several years, and garnered solid reviews and box office. Although this series never came together, the Tiana character continues to be an important one in Disney’s merchandise and in its theme parks; she recently became the star of the former Splash Mountain attraction in Disneyland and Walt Disney World, which is now known as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.
The Hollywood Reporter’s piece claims that although this Tiana series is not moving forward, Disney is “developing a separate short-form special inspired by The Princess and the Frog.” But what this news — and the existence of Moana 2 — really underscores is the fact that you should expect fewer things from Disney to go straight to Disney+. After all, why make a streaming Moana series that your regular streaming customers can watch for the price of their monthly subscription, when you could release Moana 2 in theaters, gross $1.05 billion worldwide, and then put it on streaming afterwards?
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