Here's All The News Announced At The Walt Disney Animation Studios/PIXAR Panel At D23

The bi-annual Disney centered convention D23 is going on this weekend and today they held one of two major panels centered on upcoming Disney motion pictures. Tomorrow they'll hold a panel centering on live-action films (which does include future Marvel and Star Wars movies), but today they're holding a panel solely focused on the upcoming features from Walt Disney Animation Studios and PIXAR.

Some posters for the latter studios releases already are drumming up buzz (namely in that they officially confirmed that Cars 3 and The Incredibles 3 are happening), so expect more exciting announcements and such to follow! I'll be updating this post constantly as news comes out from the panel (which starts at 3 PM PST, or 5 PM in my central time zone). So keep your eyes peeled on this page over the next two hours and refresh often for all the latest breaking news from Walt Disney Animation Studios and PIXAR!

Shakira Will Be In Zootopia
Walt Disney Animation Studios next motion picture is Zootopia, a tale of a fox and a rabbit getting into a n adventure in a city entirely run by animals. We've known of the movie before today (hell, we even have an official teaser trailer for the film) but today at the panel they revealed that Shakira will play a role in the feature as Gazelle, a pop star in the land of Zootopia. No word on how her character factors into the plot or if she's just doing a cameo of sorts.

Jack And The Beanstalk Will Become An Animated Disney Film Called Gigantic
Rumors have swirled about how Nathan Greno is apparently doing an animated film inspired by Jack And The Beanstalk at Walt Disney Animation Studios for ages now, but the project officially was confirmed today, with the film going under the title Gigantic, continuing the studios trend of one-word animated titles for their fairy tale features (i.e. Tangled, Frozen, Moana). The story of the film seems to revolve around Jack (who is reportedly of Hispanic descent in this film) befriending Ema, an 11-year old Giant. Here's a piece of concept art for the film:

That's a really beautiful piece of concept art! Hope that beauty translates into CGI in the final film! Another piece of major news regarding the film is that Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who wrote the music for Frozen, are in charge of the music for this film as well!

A Lot More Finding Dory Details Revealed!
At the last D23 event, they announced that Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy would be playing Dorys parents, but in addition to showing off footage to attendees of the panel, PIXAR also announced some new characters from Finding Dory. One of those new characters is Hank the Octopus, voiced by Ed O'Neill, Check out a picture of him below.

Other new characters in the film include Bailey, a beluga whale voiced by Ty Burrell (his character was also revealed at the last D23) and Destiny, a whale shark voiced by Kaitlin Olsen. And yes, the Tank Gang from the original film will be back. I suspect they'll find a way to get other beloved characters from the first film like Bruce the Shark and Crush the Sea Turtle back as well.

Meet Coco, The Next Original PIXAR Film From Director Lee Unkrich! 
We've been hearing about this particular film for years now, but it looks like Lee Unkrichs film about Dia De Los Muertos will finally come to the big screen in November 2017! The feature finally has a title, Coco, As someone pointed out on Twitter, "El Coco" is a Spanish term for skull, which makes sense considering skeletons apparently play a prominent role in the film, along with the holiday The Day of The Dead, of course. The main character of the movie is Miguel, a 12 year old boy.

How About A Toy Story 4 Update?
Prior to this panel, John Lasseter (who is directing Toy Story 4) revealed the films plot would revolve around the romance between Woody and Bo Peep. This idea was expanded on during the panel, with the story apparently centering around Buzz and Woody (no other toys?) going out to find Bo Peep. I believe this means the film won't be a prequel as I originally assumed when Lasseter said the film would focus on the romance between Woody and Bo Peep.

Goddamit people, couldn't we just leave the Toy Story franchise alone?? Not only is the whole film undermining that beautiful ending of Toy Story 3, now it's taking the tragedy out of the subtle, but devastating moment in Toy Story 3 where Woody is reminded that Bo Peep is one of Andys many toys that has departed in the time between the second and third Toy Story. Could PIXAR pull a rabbit out of a hat and make something glorious? Oh sure. But this project certainly rubs me the wrong way, no two ways about it.