Disney

As usual, Disney waited until late afternoon to make a major announcement, but it’s always nice to end the day with some awesome news. Today, it’s the full voice cast ensemble for The Lion King, Jon Favreau’s live-action (-ish) reimagining of the studio’s animated classic — and perhaps the most exciting project on their upcoming (and growing) slate of live-action remakes.

The pop cultural giant announced will pull its movies from Netflix and eventually have a standalone streaming site for ESPN.

More streaming services than you can shake a virtual stick at have cropped up over the past year, which makes it all the more aggravating when that one movie you want to watch is nowhere to be found. You shell out every month for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Shudder, Filmstruck and a dozen more, and yet once that craving to rewatch The Lion King hits, you’re plum out of luck. What’s the point of having countless hours of programming at your fingertips for your immediate enjoyment if that doesn’t include The Little Mermaid?

Over nearly 80 years, the 56 feature films from Walt Disney Animation Studios have become beloved and instantly recognizable their iconic fairy tales, memorable comic-relief sidekicks, terrifying villains, and some of the greatest songs in cinema history. This week heralds the release of Disney’s latest animated film, Moana, which boasts songs co-written by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. So there’s no better time to compile a list of the 25 best songs in animated Disney history — with a couple of important pre-list caveats. First, to avoid overloading the list with songs from only a few films, each movie here could only be represented by a maximum of two songs. Second, this list has films in the official Disney animation canon only, so nothing from Pixar or even The Nightmare Before Christmas. With that in mind, here’s the list!

Given how much space physical media takes up, it’s hard for movie buffs to say no to the great promise of “cloud storage,” and the idea that we could summon anything we want to watch with just a couple of clicks. But so far, reality hasn’t matched the hype. Streaming services have been focused on exclusives and original programming, to the extent that the only way to have access to everything available is to spend hundreds of dollars a month on subscription fees. Meanwhile, older films keep disappearing from the digital archives; and even items that cinephiles “own” sometimes become inaccessible whenever software updates or a site shutters.

Two sister mash up a handful of Disney songs for their maid of honor speech. Yep. It was magical.

Over the past year or so, Lin-Manuel Miranda has gone from Broadway sensation to Disney darling, lending his songwriting skills to Star Wars: The Force Awakens and signing on to star opposite Emily Blunt in the new Mary Poppins sequel — and that’s only half of it. According to Miranda, his role at Disney is rapidly expanding, and the latest project on his growing to-do list is a secret animated film with Zootopia co-director Byron Howard.

Last Friday, Walt Disney Pictures gave a limited release to Queen of Katwe, a new film inspired by the true story of a girl from the slums of Uganda who became a chess grandmaster. Though it may seem like an off-kilter choice for Disney and co-producer ESPN Films to make a bio-drama about chess, Disney has a long history of making true-story films. In the last few years, Disney has been on a kick of true-story films, interspersing them in each year’s production slate between the latest Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm entries. But which is best? Here, you’ll find our list of the 10 best Disney movies based on true stories. Get your tissues ready!

Way back in 2012 (or at least it feels way back), Netflix and Disney struck a deal for all of Disney’s movies — including Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm — to stream exclusively on Netflix Instant. According to the terms of their agreement, the deal wouldn’t kick in until 2016, which just so happens to be the year in which we are currently living. As announced today, Netflix will officially begin streaming Disney films in September, but that doesn’t mean the studio’s entire library will magically appear in your Instant browser.

Well-received though Disney’s Marvel-ous Big Hero 6 was back in 2014 (it won the freakin’ Oscar), there hasn’t been very much followup by way of a sequel. Now, Disney XD promises to continue the adventures of Hiro, Baymax and the team in a new 2017 TV series, but what might it mean on the movie end?