Disney Gives The Lion King and Frozen 2 Official Release Dates

Not soon enough!
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Disney

Here's some news that'll have your (mouse) ears perking up: Disney just announced a whole slate of release dates for its upcoming movies, and now we finally know when to expect highly anticipated fare like Frozen 2 and Disney's live-action remake of The Lion King. That's the good news. The bad news? The wait for each movie isn't exactly short.

Frozen 2 will breeze into theaters in time for Thanksgiving…two long years from now, on November 27, 2019, according to Entertainment Weekly. The sequel is expected to reunite the gang from the original, though there's no word on exactly what future icy adventures await.

Elsewhere, in warmer climates, a tweet by director Jon Favreau confirms that The Lion King, the latest in Disney's efforts to turn classic animated musicals into live-action (or, in the case of The Lion King, eerily lifelike CGI) experiences, will hit theaters on July 19, 2019. It's set to star Donald Glover as Simba, with James Earl Jones as Mufasa, and Beyoncé (!) reportedly considering voicing Nala.

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Two other major movies to get new release dates are the next Indiana Jones movie, which is now set for July 2020, and Disney's adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, starring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling. The latter movie, which will debut March 9, 2018, is directed by Ava DuVernay, a distinction that makes DuVernay the first woman of color to direct a live-action movie with a budget of $100 million or more. DuVernay is also only the third woman overall to reach that milestone, after Kathryn Bigelow and Patty Jenkins did so for 2002’s K-19: The Widowmaker and the upcoming Wonder Woman, respectively.

Also on the upcoming Disney calendar: Wreck-It Ralph sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet, a mouthful of a title that may now be too real for these times, comes out November 21, 2018; a Tangled treatment of the "Jack and the Beanstalk" story, called Gigantic, opens November 25, 2020; and Magic Camp, a comedy about rookie magicians, hits theaters April 6, 2018.

Now that you've got all of that scratched into the crevices of your day planner, the excruciating wait begins.