As other studios’ Scripted strategies followed the path of cautious recalibration in the second half of 2024, Disney’s commissioning maintained momentum in large part thanks to a swathe of new movies ordered in the last quarter of the year. Q4 2024 saw the studio announce 18 new movies in the US alone, the highest number in a single quarter since Q3 2022. 

Disney’s Scripted commissioning across movies and TV was up 55% year-on-year in Q4. By comparison, the highest year-on-year growth rate at a rival studio for the same period was seen at Warner Bros. Discovery, where Q4 Scripted orders were up by 10% on Q4 2023.

Overall, Disney announced 58 new Scripted titles across all their wholly owned subsidiaries globally in Q4 2024. This was bolstered by a bumper month of commissioning in November 2024, which saw 16 movies and 12 TV seasons ordered — the studio’s largest single month of Scripted commissioning since January 2023. There were also signs of cautious optimism in Disney’s increased willingness to hand out script orders to new projects, with development orders up 182% in Q4 on the previous quarter.

The studio nevertheless continues to lean heavily on existing properties — 44% of the first-run Scripted titles announced in Q4 are either adapted from source IP or sit within existing franchises. In the wake of a decent showing at the box office for Mufasa: The Lion King, the studio put a live-action remake of Tangled into development in December 2024, joining a live-action Cinderella spin-off centered on the character of Prince Charming already announced in October.

The major’s theatrical outlook has been buoyed by the success of Moana 2 in particular, which started life as a TV series commissioned for Disney+. The sequel’s record-breaking box office will only have cemented the studio’s strategy of retaining big screen launches for franchise IP. 

Brazil saw the largest number of new movies announced in Disney territories outside the US. Here too, sequels and nostalgia plays were prominent with the studio’s Star Distribution theatrical arm backing films such as the third instalment of the spiritual Nosso Lar saga, and an animated adaptation of classic children’s musical Os Saltimbancos. With Latin American streamer Star+ now merged into the wider Disney+ offering, local theatrical movies arguably have a more important role to play in maintaining the profile of local Originals and Exclusives on the platform. Notably, Brazil was the only major Latin American market in which a local film (Walter Salles’ Oscar-nominated I’m Still Here) made the box-office top five in 2024.

Disney’s focus on existing IP is also in evidence on the TV side, with notable new shows commissioned in Q4 2024 including nostalgic reboots of former network titles such as Scrubs for ABC, Prison Break for Hulu, and Malcolm in the Middle for Disney+. The studio also announced continuing seasons of streaming shows such as Rivals, Tell Me Lies, and The Artful Dodger. With ad spend continuing to migrate to streaming, renewal orders were harder to come by at today’s networks, with only a single linear show (Chibiverse) renewed in the last quarter of the year. But Disney is still relying on certain long-running network shows, namely Crime & Thriller procedurals, as new spin-offs from both Rookie and 9-1-1 were ordered at ABC.

While Brazil was a focus of Disney’s movie commissioning in the last quarter of 2024, TV commissions outside the US targeted Argentina and Japan, with three new local orders apiece. In the US, the studio continued to direct the largest number of quarterly TV orders to Hulu. While Disney is clearly keen to push US subscribers towards bundled offerings, Hulu’s focus on more mature audiences requires a higher turnover of content than family-friendly Disney+, with its deep catalogue of classics.

Overall, Disney announced 218 Scripted titles across both movies and TV in 2024, more than any other Big 5 studio. H2 2024 was also notable as the first time in two years that Disney closed the gap on Amazon MGM’s original Scripted commissioning levels, with 108 new orders to Amazon’s 109. Both ordered some 30% fewer titles than Netflix over the same period, however. But as the likes of Netflix double down on their broad global commissioning strategy, it is becoming increasingly clear that legacy studios should specialise to remain competitive, and in focusing on theatrical franchises and nostalgic reboots, Disney is playing to its strengths.