After finding billion-dollar success with sequels to “Moana” and “Zootopia,” Disney is giving its 2026 Thanksgiving release slot to an original animated film: “Hexed.”
Hailee Steinfeld and Rashida Jones were announced as leading the voice cast for the upcoming original animated feature, due in theaters on Nov. 25, 2026, during Disney’s CinemaCon presentation.
Despite coming out in just a few months, before today we knew precious little about “Hexed” – who was in it, what it was about and what tone the movie was going for. Thankfully, Disney expanded on the concept, a modern day fantasy, during the presentation.
Steinfeld will play Billie, a teen from a perfectly ordinary town who discovers that she is a witch, and she ends up in a magical world with the last person she wants to share it with: her uptight white collar mother, played by Jones.
In the new clip, we see Billie fall through a portal into a dark chamber filled with branches that blossom with flowers as she touches them. The branches lead her to an ancient book of spells…that can talk. And so can the quill and inkwell next to him.
The quill asks Billie if she has ever been burned at the stake, and she says “I burned a steak…in a microwave.” When the quill asks if she wishes to live in a world free of conventions that tell her who to be, Billie says yes, and the quill allows her to use it to write her name in the book.
A door opens, and Billie is welcomed to a magical world called Hexe
No major studio has put more original animated films in theaters since the pandemic than Disney and their fellow studio, Pixar. But the results have been very mixed. While Pixar has had some success with “Elemental” and the recently released “Hoppers,” Walt Disney Animation’s “Strange World” and “Wish” were box office bombs.
“Hexed” will try to reverse this trend and do better than the $255 million global total of “Wish,” ideally legging out into the holidays as an animated alternative for families to the intense duo of “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Dune: Part Three.”
We did know that Jose Trinidad, one of the great Disney story artists working today, who has been with Walt Disney Animation Studios since 2004, will be making her feature directorial debut on the project, alongside Jason Hand, who last served as one of the directors on Disney’s $1 billion-grossing “Moana 2.”
Upcoming Walt Disney Animation Studios projects include “Frozen 3” (written and directed by a returning Jennifer Lee) and “Frozen 4,” along with a number of exciting original projects, some of which will be previewed at D23, a kind of all-Disney Comic-Con, later this year.
“Hexed” arrives in theaters on November 25, 2026.