Disney+‘s new most-watched movie worldwide is a sci-fi film, and its streaming success can be easily explained. It is true that horror movies have become the talk of the town over the last couple of months. After all, nobody could have predicted the astronomical level of success that Obsession has achieved with a budget of under $1 million. Likewise, Backrooms has also excelled.
At a current total of $212.7 million, Backrooms is already A24’s highest-grossing movie of all time. That said, while it is the season of horror films in Hollywood, 2026’s sci-fi movie lineup is absolutely stacked, showing that fans of that genre will also be well served. Ryan Gosling’s Project Hail Mary showed that earlier this year, perfectly adapting the novel it was based on.
Recently, The Mandalorian and Grogu also marked the return of the Star Wars movie franchise to theaters for the first time since 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. While sci-fi movies continue to be released throughout the year in theaters, 2026 has also seen films like War Machine and Mercy find streaming success on Netflix and Prime Video, respectively. Now is the time for another such case.
From Steamboat Willie to Encanto · Eight Questions How Well Do You Know Disney Movies? “When you wish upon a star…”
Steamboat EraBlack-and-white Mickey
The PrincessesSnow White onward
90s RenaissanceLion King & Aladdin
Pixar LampToy Story onward
Modern EraFrozen & beyond
01
On November 18, 1928, Walt Disney premiered a seven-minute black-and-white short at the Colony Theatre in New York — the first Mickey Mouse cartoon released to the public, and one of the earliest sound cartoons ever made. Whistling Mickey at the helm of a riverboat became the studio’s first iconic image. Name the short.
✓ Correct! Steamboat Willie. Mickey actually finished production first on the silent short Plane Crazy earlier that year, but Walt and his brother Roy bet the studio’s entire future on retooling Steamboat Willie with synchronised sound — a brand-new technology that had only just appeared with The Jazz Singer (1927). The gamble worked: Steamboat Willie’s November 1928 release made Mickey an instant national icon and put Disney on the map. The short entered the public domain in January 2024, exactly 95 years after release.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Steamboat Willie. Plane Crazy was actually animated first (May 1928, silent) but didn’t find a distributor. The Gallopin’ Gaucho was the second Mickey short, also originally silent. The Karnival Kid (1929) is where Mickey first speaks. The breakthrough — the first publicly released, sound-synchronised Mickey short — is Steamboat Willie.
02
Walt Disney sank the studio’s entire balance sheet, plus a heavy mortgage on his home, into a project Hollywood derisively called “Disney’s Folly” — the first full-length cel-animated feature film ever made in English. It premiered December 21, 1937 at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles to a standing ovation. Name the film.
✓ Correct! Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). The 83-minute film cost $1.49 million — an enormous gamble at the height of the Depression — and grossed $8 million on its initial release, the highest-grossing sound film made up to that point. Walt won an honorary Oscar (one large statuette and seven small ones, presented by Shirley Temple). The film’s success funded the construction of Disney’s Burbank studio and effectively created the feature-animation industry.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Pinocchio (1940) is the second Disney feature. Fantasia (1940) is the third. Bambi (1942) is the fifth. Snow White was the bet-the-studio first — ridiculed in production as “Disney’s Folly” before becoming the highest-grossing sound film ever made up to 1937.
03
Walt Disney’s vision of a film-quality theme park opened to a chaotic, oversold “Black Sunday” debut — counterfeit tickets, a gas leak, and asphalt soft enough to swallow women’s heels. The Anaheim park was built on 160 acres of orange groves in just 12 months. In which year did Disneyland open?
✓ Correct! July 17, 1955 — press preview day, dubbed “Black Sunday” in Disney company lore. ABC broadcast a live two-hour TV special featuring Ronald Reagan, Bob Cummings and Art Linkletter (collectively winging the script as things went wrong). Disneyland was built on Anaheim orange groves Walt mortgaged his home to fund. Walt Disney World opened in 1971 in Orlando, six years after Walt’s death — that’s the date many people confuse with Disneyland’s opening.
✗ Wrong. The answer is 1955 — specifically July 17. 1948 is when Walt first sketched the concept. 1962 doesn’t mark a major Disney park milestone. 1971 is when Walt Disney World opened in Florida (six years after Walt’s death) — that’s the date most often confused with Disneyland’s. The original Anaheim park opened in 1955.
04
The Lion King (1994) was pitched internally as “Bambi meets…” a particular Shakespeare play — and the parallels are unmissable: a young prince’s father is murdered by his uncle, who usurps the throne; the prince later returns to avenge him. Which Shakespeare tragedy provided the bones of the story?
✓ Correct! Hamlet. The internal pitch was famously “Bambi meets Hamlet” (or, in some retellings, “Hamlet with lions”): Mufasa is the murdered king-father (Hamlet Sr.), Scar is the usurping uncle (Claudius), Simba is the exiled prince (Hamlet), and even the ghost-on-a-cliff appearance plays out beat-for-beat. The Lion King grossed $968 million worldwide and remained the highest-grossing animated film for 16 years until Toy Story 3 broke the record in 2010.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Hamlet. Macbeth is the “ambitious wife pushes husband to murder the king” story (the closer Disney parallel there is the Frollo/Esmeralda dynamic in Hunchback). Othello is the jealousy tragedy. King Lear is the divided-kingdom tragedy. The Lion King’s bones are unambiguously Hamlet’s — ghost, uncle-murderer, exiled-prince and all.
05
Frozen (2013) became the highest-grossing animated film at the time and won two Oscars including Best Animated Feature. Its standout song — performed by Idina Menzel as Elsa, written by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez — won the Oscar for Best Original Song and dominated radio playlists for an entire year. Name the song.
✓ Correct! “Let It Go” — the Oscar-winning power ballad that fundamentally rewrote the film’s plot in production: Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote the song so persuasively that the directors threw out the existing script and rewrote Elsa from villain to misunderstood protagonist. The song spent over 30 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, was translated into 41 languages for international releases, and its Idina Menzel single sold 10.9 million copies. Frozen grossed $1.28 billion and held the highest-grossing-animated-film record until its own 2019 sequel.
✗ Wrong. The answer is “Let It Go.” The other three options are also Frozen songs by the same Lopez/Anderson-Lopez writing team. “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” is the early childhood-montage number. “For the First Time in Forever” is Anna’s coronation-day song. “Love Is an Open Door” is the Hans/Anna duet. The Oscar-winning monster hit is “Let It Go.”
06
In November 1995, Pixar — then a small Disney distribution partner founded by Ed Catmull, John Lasseter and Steve Jobs — released the world’s first fully computer-animated feature film. It became the highest-grossing film of 1995 in North America and won a Special Achievement Oscar for John Lasseter. Name the movie.
✓ Correct! Toy Story (November 22, 1995). Made for $30 million, it grossed $373 million worldwide and immediately rewrote what was possible in animation. Steve Jobs — who’d bought Pixar from Lucasfilm in 1986 for $5 million — took the company public a week after the film’s release at $22 a share, instantly making him a billionaire. Disney bought Pixar outright in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock, making Jobs Disney’s largest individual shareholder. A Bug’s Life (1998) was the second Pixar feature; Monsters, Inc. (2001) the fourth.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Toy Story (1995). A Bug’s Life (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Finding Nemo (2003) are all later Pixar features. Toy Story was the studio’s first — and the first fully computer-animated theatrical feature in cinema history. Its release a week before Steve Jobs took Pixar public effectively turned him from struggling NeXT-era founder into a billionaire.
07
In a roughly seven-year span, Disney made a sequence of franchise acquisitions that transformed it from an animation studio into a global IP empire. Pixar (2006, $7.4B), Lucasfilm (2012, $4.05B) and 21st Century Fox (2019, $71.3B) bracket the era. The remaining major brand — bought in 2009 for $4 billion — brought Iron Man, Spider-Man and the Avengers under Disney’s roof. Name it.
✓ Correct! Marvel Entertainment, acquired August 2009 for $4 billion. The deal followed Marvel Studios’ first independent production (Iron Man, 2008) and gave Disney rights to over 5,000 characters — though crucially not Spider-Man (still under a Sony deal) or the X-Men/Fantastic Four (under Fox until the 2019 acquisition reunited them). Disney’s combined Marvel-Lucasfilm-Pixar-Fox portfolio is now the largest IP holding in entertainment history.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Marvel Entertainment. DC Entertainment is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (since the 1969 Kinney/National acquisition). Image Comics and Dark Horse remain independent. Disney bought Marvel in August 2009 for $4 billion, two years after Marvel Studios’ first self-financed film (Iron Man, 2008).
08
Disney Animation’s Moana (2016) features Hawaiian newcomer Auli’i Cravalho as the title role and Dwayne Johnson as the demigod Maui. Its musical numbers — including “How Far I’ll Go” and “You’re Welcome” — were co-written by a Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Broadway composer who’d become a household name with Hamilton the previous year. Name him.
✓ Correct! Lin-Manuel Miranda — co-writing with Te Vaka frontman Opetaia Foa’i and composer Mark Mancina. Miranda’s Hamilton had opened on Broadway the year before (August 2015) and turned him into the rare Disney songwriter with crossover Broadway-rap credibility. Miranda has since become a Disney mainstay, returning for Encanto (2021), where his songs “Surface Pressure” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” topped the Billboard Hot 100.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Lin-Manuel Miranda. Stephen Sondheim wrote Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods and West Side Story’s lyrics — but never a Disney animated feature. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote Cats, Phantom and Evita — also never a Disney film. Alan Menken is the great Disney Renaissance composer (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) but didn’t write Moana’s songs. Moana is Miranda’s, with Foa’i and Mancina.
The Castle Has Spoken · Final Tally Your Magic Kingdom Standing
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True Disney royalty — or just a tourist with churros?
Hoppers has become a global hit on Disney+. The animated movie stands as Pixar’s latest theatrical release — Toy Story 5 will soon take that position on June 19 — and follows Mabel, a 19-year-old whose mind takes over a robotic beaver, allowing her to experience a whole new world, that of animals, and feel compelled to save it. The sci-fi animated movie is a streaming sensation.
Hoppers Has Become Disney+’s New Global Hit
Hoppers was released in theaters on March 6, with the sci-fi movie arriving on Disney+ recently, on June 3. That means that the 2026 Pixar movie came to streaming exactly 89 days after its theatrical debut, which is a fairly standard streaming window. After it arrived on Disney+, Hoppers became an instant streaming sensation worldwide. It debuted at 3rd on the streamer’s global charts after its first day on the platform, with Hoppers currently standing as the most-watched movie on Disney+ worldwide. According to FlixPatrol, Hoppers is trending in 74 countries, with the sci-fi movie ranking #1 in all of them.
That is a massive feat for Disney+’s new top movie. Among those countries are Brazil, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and more. Hoppers is also the most-watched movie on Disney+ in the United States. Nationwide, Pixar’s latest movie ranks above films like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Toy Story 4, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, The Devil Wears Prada, Deadpool & Wolverine, and more. Hoppers‘ overnight status as a global streaming sensation might come as a surprise to some, but there are many reasons to believe that the sci-fi film’s positive performance was to be expected.
Hoppers’ Streaming Success On Disney+ Is Easy To Understand
Mabel in a bear’s mouth in Hoppers
For starters, Hoppers employs Pixar’s signature style of humor, which is magnified by its young character and Mabel’s surreal experience of being turned into a beaver, albeit a mechanical one, and interacting with other animals. To make the most out of that absolutely bonkers premise, Hoppers cast skilled comedic actors like Jon Hamm, Dave Franco, Sam Richardson, and many more. Meryl Streep also brings the necessary gravitas to the Insect Queen, a key character in the villain’s storyline. Hoppers’ fresh concept, fluid animation, strong cast, and Pixar’s brand recognition all play a role in its Disney+ success.
Adding to that is the fact that Hoppers is an animated movie that was also successful in theaters. Based on a reported budget of $150 million, the 2026 sci-fi movie needed to finish between $300 million and $375 million to break even. At a global total of $372 million, Hoppers likely recouped its costs. Hoppers also holds a near-perfect 94% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and an equally stellar 93% audience score. Those who have watched it tend to enjoy Hoppers, and as it arrives on Disney+, that positive word-of-mouth and viewers’ facilitated access to the film make it a global hit.
