Two Disney Sequels, One Big Summer: Toy Story 5 and the Live-Action Moana Are Here

There is something about a Disney sequel that does something funny to time.

I was in college when the first Toy Story hit theaters in November 1995. A group of us crammed into my best friend’s yellow Volkswagen van and headed to the drive-in, because back then you could fit an entire carload of people in for five bucks. We were young and broke and absolutely not the target audience. We were mesmerized anyway.

That was 31 years ago.

Toy Story 5, directed by Andrew Stanton and co-written with McKenna Harris, arrived in theaters this summer as the fifth installment in Pixar’s landmark franchise. The story centers on Jessie, now leading Bonnie’s toys, as the arrival of Lilypad, a smart tablet that becomes Bonnie’s new obsession, threatens to make the whole toy room irrelevant. It is, at its heart, a story about what it feels like when the things you love start to get left behind. If you are a parent of a teenager, that is going to hit you somewhere you did not expect.

Toy Story 3 was my son’s first movie in a theater. He sat there completely mesmerized. He is 16 now, and he still went with me to see Toy Story 5 without complaint. I am counting that as a win.

I have always been drawn to the underdogs in this franchise. While everyone else fell in love with Woody and Buzz from day one, I became a Forky fan the moment he appeared in Toy Story 4, anxiously committed to being a piece of trash and genuinely confused about his own existence. He is, honestly, a lot of us. Tony Hale returns in the role, and Melissa Villaseñor joins him as Karen Beverly, Forky’s counterpart. I am genuinely hopeful these two finally get the fan recognition they deserve. What struck me most is how this feels like a genuine shift for the franchise, and yet somehow it is just as fresh and entertaining as the movies that came before. It is a heartwarming tale about bravery, discovery, and figuring out what really matters, wrapped up in a story that still made me laugh out loud, more than once, watching Buzz, Woody, and Jessie stumble their way through one mess after another. I do not think I expected to be laughing like that as an adult. And the nods to the earlier films are still there, woven in, the kind that hit you right in the chest if you grew up with this franchise.

Now, as of today, Disney is doing it again.

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The live-action Moana opened in theaters this morning, July 10, 2026, landing on the exact 10th anniversary of the original animated film. Catherine Laga’aia, an 18-year-old newcomer from Australia with Samoan heritage, makes her feature film debut as Moana, the spirited Pacific voyager who answers the ocean’s call and sails beyond the reef of her island home. Dwayne Johnson returns as Maui, the demigod who joins her on the journey, becoming the first Disney performer to reprise the same character from an animated film in its live-action counterpart. Original voice actress Auliʻi Cravalho stepped back from the title role to make space for new Pacific Islander representation, but stayed involved as an executive producer and even performs a new original song, “Along the Way,” alongside Laga’aia and Johnson.

I am getting my tickets today for the full 3-D D-Box experience.

There is something about this summer that feels intentional, whether Disney planned it that way or not. Two stories rooted in the past, arriving at a moment when most of us could use a reminder of what made us fall in love with stories in the first place. My son is 16. I was in college when all of this started. The yellow VW van is long gone. But I will be in that theater today, and I suspect I will feel exactly the way I did back then: completely mesmerized.

Toy Story 5, directed by Andrew Stanton and McKenna Harris, is now playing in theaters. Moana, directed by Thomas Kail, opens nationwide today, July 10, 2026. Both films are rated PG.