Every Disney Animated Film, Ranked Worst to Best

A box-office and critical disappointment when it debuted near Thanksgiving in 2023, roughly in conjunction with the studio's centennial, Disney's 62nd animated feature is a musical fantasy about a young woman who challenges her kingdom's leader (and his habit of hoarding the magical wishes that are available to citizens of this magical realm), featuring the voices of Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, and Alan Tudyk. Critics differed about the quality of the computer animation—some found it bland while others admired it—but most reviewers agreed that Wish was ultimately let down by its script.

"This may be the worst major animated film Disney has released in the past 40 years and its lack of creative energy doesn't augur well for the immediate future." –James Berardinelli, ReelViews

What is the worst Disney animated film ever released? This 2005 film is one of two possible answers. Released in 3D, Chicken Little is Disney's first fully computer-animated release (not including its Pixar films) and stars Zach Braff as the titular character in a comedic adventure based on the fable on the same name (though obviously greatly expanded, to the point where it somehow becomes an alien invasion story). Disney's third straight critical dud was actually the highest-grossing film of the trio despite reviews that pegged the film as "lame" and lacking the usual Disney character.

Oddly, some of Disney's most forgettable releases aren't all that distant. But even if the average movie fan may be hard-pressed to pull up any details about this 2003 feature, it holds one distinction: Of the 57 films in the Disney animated feature canon, there has never been one worse than Brother Bear, at least in the eyes of critics. Kicking off a streak of four straight films scoring 60 or below—the worst stretch in Disney's history—Bear follows an Inuit boy who hunts and kills a bear, only to be magically changed into a bear himself (where he, inevitably, picks up some important life lessons). But while critics found it unbearably "generic" and "predictable," it actually performed decently at the box office, grossing $250 million.

One of only three Disney films to score 50 or lower (and, yes, they all came in consecutive years), this 2004 dud performed so poorly at the box office that Disney wouldn't risk making another traditionally animated film for another five years. (Even then, Disney has only made two traditionally animated films since Range.) The film, a comedic western centering on three cows trying to save their floundering farm from foreclosure, grossed only $103 million despite a fairly big-name cast led by Roseanne Barr and Judi Dench. That's less than any other Disney animated film this century, and just one of many financial disasters for Disney in 2004, including its live action films.

It took at least seven writers (including Joss Whedon) to come up with the original story and script for this Jules Verne-inspired, non-musical, sci-fi adventure about a mission to the lost city of Atlantis in 1914. Atlantis features distinctive visuals provided by comic book artist Mike Mignola (Hellboy), one of the many ways in which the film is unique in the Disney canon. (Another way: it isn't aimed at a younger audience, though it's also not quite sophisticated enough to attract adults.) One way that Atlantis isn't unique, at least among Disney's 2000s entries: that mediocre Metascore. Many critics couldn't get past the muddled, uninspiring story. And Atlantis was such a box office disappointment that Disney was forced to cancel plans for both a theme park attraction and a television series based on the film.

Disney's animation studio had a stellar 1990s after two decades of doldrums following the death of Walt Disney, producing its biggest hits to date. That rebirth proved unsustainable, however, and the studio fell into a second "Dark Age"—despite maintaining its new film-a-year pace—beginning with this expensive 2000 non-musical adventure that blends then-cutting-edge CGI animation with real-world backgrounds. Because Dinosaur was a decent box office hit, some Disney followers cite the next film (The Emperor's New Groove) as the start of Disney's second dark age, but Dinosaur is certainly the beginning of a dip in quality that would come to characterize many of the studio's early 21st century films. Critics found the visuals stunning but the story "sappy", "childish" and "pedestrian." Despite that childish story, Dinosaur is only the second Disney animated film (following The Black Cauldron) to receive a PG rating, though most of the studio's subsequent films would follow suit.

Disney's 1973 animated musical take on the Robin Hood legend features anthropomorphic animals (rather than your more typical humans) in all of the roles, including a fox Robin Hood and a bear Little John. One reason for that decision: a smaller than normal budget necessitated reusing character design, artwork, and sometimes entire animations from previous Disney films (included from a failed project based on the "Reynard the Fox" legend)—it's not a coincidence that Little John moves an awful lot like The Jungle Book's Baloo. Though it is one of the studio's worst-reviewed animated features, it performed well enough upon its original release to ensure that Disney could continue to make films without its founder.

Marking the end of Disney's 1970s-'80s dark period of fewer, less successful films, this 1988 feature is a loose adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, with its characters transformed into cats and dogs (voiced by the likes of Joey Lawrence, Billy Joel, and Dom DeLuise) and its setting transported to present day New York City. Critics felt then (and now) that it wasn't one of the studio's better outings, though it was mildly profitable.

Lloyd Alexander's five-book, award-winning Chronicles of Prydain fantasy series about a young assistant pig-keeper named Taran has delighted young readers since the 1960s. But Alexander's world didn't make its way to the big screen until this 1985 Disney film, which is named after the second book and contains elements from the first two novels, though it makes numerous changes to the story.

To call it a wasted opportunity is an understatement. The result—Disney's first PG-rated animated feature and its first to feature some computer animation and lack a single musical number—easily ranks among the studio's worst films, and it was a complete financial disaster thanks to a then-record $44 million production budget and minuscule box office grosses. The fallout was so bad that for a time Disney appeared headed to bankruptcy. Needless to say, the remainder of the book series never made it to film, and the film's princess heroine, Ellonwy, has been excluded from the Disney Princesses franchise.

The period from 1989's The Little Mermaid to 1994's The Lion King ranks as the most impressive stretch in Disney history by any measure. It had to end sometime, and it did, in 1995, with the release of Pocahontas, though the studio wouldn't fully head into another dark period until 2000. The first Disney animated film to feature a woman of color as its lead character and the first to be based on actual events (though it is a deeply fictionalized account of the life of the titular Native American and her relationship with colonial Jamestown settler John Smith, voiced by Mel Gibson), Pocahontas was able to overcome its mixed reviews to gross nearly $350 million, though that figure was considered a disappointment after the record-setting success of The Lion King. It did pick up another two Oscar trophies, however, with wins for score and song going to Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (the latter a theater veteran working on his first, but not his last, Disney film).

The third sequel in Disney's animated canon—if you can call a film without a story a "sequel"—this 2000 release repeats the format of the studio's 1940 classic Fantasia. Like that film, Fantasia 2000 is an anthology of cartoon shorts set to pieces of classical music, though it adds some celebrity narrators (Steve Martin, Quincy Jones, James Earl Jones, Penn & Teller—well, mostly Penn). One of those shorts, the Mickey Mouse vehicle "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," is a repeat from the original film. The subject matter and an IMAX-heavy rollout (which limits the number of screens the film can reach) meant that Fantasia 2000, like the original film, was never going to be a box office hit, and it grossed just $90 million. Unlike the first film, it wasn't universally loved; critics found the sequel's segments a mixed bag.

One man's trash may be another man's treasure, but this Treasure ranks among the most disposable of Disney's animated films. Taking the rough story of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island but inexplicably transporting it to outer space (one of three straight sci-fi films for Disney after never making one before), Planet is one of the studio's biggest 21st century flops, barely reaching $109 million in grosses. (That's not anywhere close to enough to be profitable.) Critics didn't hate the film, but nor did they enjoy it, though there is some appreciation for the rather novel stylistic decision to combining cutting-edge 3D CGI backgrounds with traditional-looking hand-drawn characters.

Released in 1946, the Nelson Eddy-narrated Music is an anthology film containing ten unrelated animated shorts (some featuring a bit of live action) set to music. If that sounds a bit like Fantasia, it's not entirely dissimilar, though it features jazz rather than classical music and lacks the high-budget production values (and the high-scoring reviews). Though it is tied for the lowest Metascore among Disney's six 1940s-era "package" films, it seems to be ever so slightly better liked today than the similar (though higher scoring) Melody Time, released two years later and often cited now as the worst of the six films.

Arguably not even a feature—it clocks in at just 42 minutes, though is nevertheless considered to be part of Disney's official animated feature canon—1942's mostly forgotten "Hello Friends" consists of four segments (two featuring Donald Duck, one Goofy, and one with a new character named Pedro), all set in Latin America, and all featuring short live action clips in addition to animation. It was the first of a series of six "package films" (i.e., anthologies) that would constitute almost all of Disney's remaining 1940s film lineup, with shorter runtimes necessitated by WWII and a labor dispute, which combined to deplete the studio's staff. The production of Amigos followed a State Department-funded goodwill tour of South America by Disney employees, and the film served as a much-needed introduction to the region for many American moviegoers.

The final Disney animated film released during Walt Disney's lifetime, Stone is a musical adaptation of T.H. White's 1938 King Arthur origin story of the same name (which later was incorporated into White's much longer, revisionist Arthurian novel The Once and Future King, which also inspired the stage and live-action film musical Camelot). Disney's film takes a more comedic and kid-friendly approach to the story of Arthur's childhood, and it actually performed well at the box office when released in 1963, though it doesn't quite have the memorable soundtrack or enduring fan base (or the glowing reviews) of other early Disney films. Nevertheless, a live-action adaptation has been in development since 2015.

Many of Disney's early 21st century films were science-fiction-based—a notable departure from the studio's past work—but few of those were very good. Barely earning mild approval from reviewers, this 3D, computer-animated 2007 film (coming after a rare year with no Disney animated releases) is based on William Joyce's book A Day with Wilbur Robinson about a time-traveling child inventor.

It turns out that Disney couldn't just let it go. The second straight sequel from an animation studio that used to avoid such things (at least theatrically), this 2019 release continues the story of the 2013 hit Frozen. Joining returning stars Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, and Josh Gad are Sterling K. Brown and Evan Rachel Wood (among others). Reviews are slightly less positive this time, though they are certainly good enough to make it another likely hit.

Considered the final release in Disney's original "golden age" of animation, 1967's The Jungle Book is also the first film released following the death of founder Walt Disney in late 1966 (though many of the studio's late 1960s and '70s releases contained at least some work that he supervised). Based on Rudyard Kipling's book of the same name, the oft-praised animated musical boasts one of Disney's better soundtracks (with classic songs such as "The Bare Necessities"), and it was a major hit upon its original release. The film is so popular that Disney has produced not one but two live-action adaptations: first in 1994 (the studio's very first live-action remake of one of its cartoons) from director Stephen Sommers, and again in 2016 with director Jon Favreau. (The upcoming live-action feature Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle is also based on Kipling's book but has no connection to Disney or the previous adaptations.)

Disney's only animated feature of 2022 is a pulp fiction-influenced, comedic sci-fi adventure from some of the team behind Raya and the Last Dragon, including director Don Hall and writer Qui Nguyen. The film finds a family of explorers (voiced by Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Gabrielle Union, and Jaboukie Young-White) venturing on a dangerous mission through a land filled with unusual creatures. Critics liked the design of this bizarre world far better than the story itself.

A very loose adaptation of Daniel P. Mannix's 1967 novel, Disney's 1981 film depicts the relationship between a red fox (voiced by Mickey Rooney) and a hound dog (Kurt Russell)—two animals who grow up as friends only to learn that society dictates they are supposed to be enemies. The film, which probably holds up a bit better than that Metascore suggests (critics like that it has a worthwhile message), marked a (not entirely peaceful) transition within the studio to a new generation of animators, and it is the final Disney film to feature the work of Don Bluth, who left the studio during Hound's production to found his own company and make The Secret of NIMH.

Disney's ninth animated feature and the fourth of its six 1940s "package films," Fun and Fancy Free isn't exactly Disney's most enduring film, though it is far from the studio's worst. If it's notable for anything, it is for being the last film to feature Walt Disney himself as the voice of Mickey Mouse, who appears in one of the film's two segments, titled "Mickey and the Beanstalk" (a take on the "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairy tale). The other segment, "Bongo," is based on a short story by Sinclair Lewis and was originally developed as a semi-prequel to Dumbo, though it ultimately didn't have any connection to that film. Edgar Bergen and Dinah Shore narrate the two segments.

Definitely not to be confused with The Aristocrats, Disney's 20th animated feature (released in 1970) was the studio's first to be produced entirely after Walt Disney's death, though he personally greenlit the project in the mid-'60s. And perhaps it missed his touch. Unlike most of its predecessors, The Aristocrats—a Paris-set musical rom-com about aristocratic cats—features an original story (first developed for a Disney television program), but the film was only modestly successful at the box office, and isn't regarded as highly as many of Disney's previous releases, though it's far from the worst of the studio's 1970s-80s doldrums period. Still, you have to give the film a few bonus points for casting Scatman Crothers as a jazzy cat named Scat Cat.

Released in 2008 a few years after Disney's acquisition of Pixar, the 3D, digitally-animated Bolt certainly looks like a Pixar movie, though it bears the Disney brand. It also doesn't quite match the quality of most Pixar films, though it is an improvement over many of the films of Disney's disappointing early 2000s period. The film centers on a dog (voiced by John Travolta) who is the unknowing star of a television show: He believes that the events happening to him there are real—and that he actually has superpowers—and sets out to save his "kidnapped" co-star (voiced by Miley Cyrus). Bolt was a decent box office hit and picked up an Oscar nomination for best animated film.

Capitalizing on Hollywood's short-lived infatuation with Australia (see, e.g., Young Einstein, Crocodile Dundee), Down Under finds the gang from 1977's The Rescuers on a new mission in the land of kangaroos. It is just the second (of five) sequels in the Disney animated canon to date, and the first since 1944, though plans for a third Rescuers film were scrapped when stars Eva Gabor and John Candy died. (It also didn't help that Down Under greatly underperformed at the box office.) A lesser effort than the original film, Down Under is notable mainly as the first film to be entirely animated using digital techniques.

Underappreciated by critics and audiences at the time of its original release, this trippy 1951 musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's two Alice fantasy novels ultimately attained all-time classic status and today is considered one of the studio's most-loved films. It was a struggle to get the film to the screen—Walt Disney once wanted to make it his first feature in the early 1930s in a half animated, half live-action format, but instead opted for Snow White—and it was a huge money loser for Disney once it finally got there, reaching profitability only in the 1970s thanks to a series of theatrical re-releases capitalizing on a growing cultural fondness for psychedelica.

Disney also released a 2010 live-action Alice in Wonderland from director Tim Burton (and a dreadful 2016 sequel from James Bobin), though those films are better characterized as fresh adaptations of the Carroll books rather than as live-action remakes of the animated film.t

Seven unconnected short segments set mostly to pop and folk tunes make up perhaps the least memorable of Disney's six low-budget, 1940s-era package films. Reportedly, Melody Time received a mostly negative response from critics upon its release in 1948, though it subsequently fared slightly better with reviewers. Still, despite the star-power of Trigger ("The Smartest Horse in the Movies"), it is far from a classic.

Disney's second release of 2000 and 40th animated feature overall is another rare non-musical in the Disney canon, going for straight, often slapstick, comedy in its story about a young Incan emperor who is transformed into a Llama. The project was conceived six years earlier as a musical called Kingdom of the Sun, and followed a fairly tortuous path to get to its final form. (It did retain one of the original film's songs, a Sting-performed number called "My Funny Friend and Me.") The resulting film actually scored decent reviews from critics, but moviegoers mostly stayed away from Groove when it was in theaters, making it a money loser for the studio until its home video release, when it performed unexpectedly well.

When Disney adapts Brothers Grimm fairy tales, the results are usually good. And this 3D, computer-animated, musical take on "Rapunzel" was certainly good for the studio's bottom line despite some reports that this six-years-in-the-making film was the most expensive animated feature ever made. The film grossed over $590 million worldwide and was nominated for over a dozen awards (especially for its music, by Disney veteran Alan Menken). A spin-off television series now airs on the Disney Channel.

The first Disney-animated film in two years, Ralph Breaks the Internet finds the characters from 2012's Wreck-It Ralph setting off on a new adventure in the World Wide Web. Newcomers to the cast include Taraji P. Henson and Gal Gadot, and critics seem to like it as much as they did the first film (that's a good thing). It's just the fifth animated sequel in Disney history.

Disney's 1998 feature, counted today among the "Disney Princess" films mainly because it features a female protagonist, features the voice of ER's Ming-Na Wen as the title character, a warrior from Chinese legend who disguises herself as a man in order to fight in the army. The musical's soundtrack features the song "Reflection," which was then re-recorded by a 17-year-old Christina Aguilera as her debut single. (Spoiler alert: she became famous.) That said, the rest of Mulan's music didn't inspire critics, though they did like much of the story and the animation. The film wasn't a major hit, but it did perform a bit better than its predecessor (Hercules) at the box office, suggesting at the time that there could be life yet in the "Disney Renaissance." (Another spoiler alert: nope.)

Set in the world of classic videogames—but unlike Pixels, actually funny and watchable—this Annie Award-winning 2012 feature ups the comedy quotient to great success, helped in part by some inspired casting. John C. Reilly voices the Donkey Kong-esque title character, who is tired of being ostracized by his videogame character colleagues for being a villain. Joining him are Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch, Jack McBrayer, Mindy Kaling, Alan Tudyk, and Joe Lo Truglio, among others. A strong showing at the box office (over $470 million) encouraged Disney to greenlight a sequel, which is now in theaters.

A definite (and important) step in the right direction after the utter disaster of The Black Cauldron the previous year, 1986's Great Mouse Detective nevertheless failed to lift Disney completely out of its dark period of critical and commercial mediocrity. (There would be another dud yet to come.) Set in Victorian London and based on Eve Titus's Basil of Baker Street children's novels (which in turn are modeled on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, but focusing on the previously ignored mice and rats living beneath Holmes' home), the well-reviewed film may have single-handedly saved Disney's animation studio by making a (modest) profit, encouraging Disney executives to greenlight additional products. In a few years, beginning with the arrival of The Little Mermaid, they would be rewarded handsomely for that decision.

Disney's first traditionally animated film in five years, 2009's The Princess and the Frog (based on both the Brothers Grimm fairy tale The Frog Prince and E.D. Baker's The Frog Princess and set in 1920s New Orleans) returns Disney to its musical roots, featuring original songs by Randy Newman. More importantly, it is the first Disney film with an African-American woman as its protagonist: Tiana, voiced by Anika Noni Rose. Coming after nearly a decade of commercial and/or critical duds that found Disney veering away from what it does best, Frog is often considered to mark the beginning of a new revival period for the animation studio that continues to the present day.

Disney has owned comics giant Marvel Entertainment for nearly a decade, so it is somewhat of a surprise that it has only made one animated Marvel film to date. That film is 2014's Big Hero 6, based (loosely) on the somewhat obscure Marvel superhero team of the same name. The Oscar-winning result was mostly lauded by critics and scored big at the box office, with grosses in excess of $650 million. Disney followed the film with an animated television series that continues the story.

While Disney's 1996 feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame went back to France in the 1400s, the studio's follow-up film headed even further back in time, to the world of Greek (and Roman) mythology. The musical comedy Hercules, released in the summer of 1997, was a bit of a box office disappointment, grossing just $250 million compared to the prior film's $325 million (and nowhere close to the Disney hits of the early 1990s). And it certainly isn't an accurate retelling of classical mythology. Still, critics generally praised the film for its humor and for the performance by James Woods as the villainous Hades.

The last of Disney's six 1940s-era package movies, this 1949 release is comprised of two segments: one adapting the classic novel The Wind in the Willows, the other Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, with narration coming from Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby. Despite the quality of the source material, the film itself is not highly regarded, though it did lead to one of Disney's best-known theme park attractions, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. For the last few decades, the two segments have mostly been distributed as separate films. Disney would not make another animated anthology film until 1977's The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

The final Disney film directed by Wolfgang Reitherman (who helmed many of the studio's '60s and '70s features) as well as the last to feature the work of any of the studio's core of original animators, The Rescuers is 1977 adaptation of Margery Sharp's book series about an international organization of mice (voiced by the likes of Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor) tasked with performing rescues around the globe. Not including the 1940s package film Saludos Amigos, it is the first of Disney animated films to receive a theatrically released sequel. Disney would not release another film this good for a dozen years.

A.A. Milne's beloved Winnie the Pooh stories have been animated by Disney many times over the years, including in the feature-length 1977 anthology The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. This short but well-liked 2011 film compiles three of Milne's stories and features a traditional 2D, hand-drawn animation style similar to Disney's previous Pooh shorts—a style that has not been used by the studio since.

While it's far from the massive successes that typified Disney's early '90s output, this 1996 musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel set in 15th century France was a major improvement over Pocahontas, released the year before. While Hunchback makes many changes to the book, it still embraces some darker, more dramatic themes (especially for a Disney animated movie), which critics admired.

Released in early 2021 in theaters as well as on the Disney+ streaming service, the studio's 59th animated feature is based on an original story—Disney's first such film since Moana five years prior. It's a fantasy tale set in ancient Asia in which a lone warrior (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran) teams up with the world's sole surviving dragon (Awkwafina) to fend off an invasion by a group of monsters known as the Druun.

A perhaps too-prolific Disney managed to release six animated features from 2001-05 (not even counting the films it distributed for Pixar or Studio Ghibli). Only one of those six—2002's Lilo & Stitch—received positive reviews from critics. But Stitch was good enough to score an Academy Award nomination for best animated film in addition to those solid reviews. A rare original story in the Disney canon, the film's present-day (but fantastical) story centers on a Hawaiian girl who adopts an extraterrestrial creature as her pet. The comedic, frenetic, and fun result proved so popular with audiences that Disney would go on to make two straight-to-video sequels and a television spinoff. Next up could be a live-action remake, though that just-announced project is still in the early development stages.

Capturing the public's attention like no Disney animated feature since The Lion King, this 2013 computer-animated hit is the highest-grossing Disney animated film to date (though Lion King and other titles have better numbers if you adjust their older totals for inflation)—in fact, it's the highest-grossing animated film by any studio, ever. Loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale "The Snow Queen," Frozen features memorable songs by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and EGOT-winner Robert Lopez, including the Oscar-winning hit "Let It Go," sung by the apparently unmemorably named Idina Menzel. A sequel, Frozen 2, followed in 2019.

Disney's 60th animated feature is a South American musical fantasy featuring original songs by Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda (who also shares a story credit). Released in late 2021, Encanto centers on a Colombian woman (voiced by Brooklyn Nine Nine's Stephanie Beatriz) who is the only member of her family not to have magical powers. But it falls on her to save the day when her family's magic is threatened. Critics found the film somewhat short of magical—thanks to some problems with the screenplay—but still lauded the film's warmth, joyfulness, and music.

Disney's 1953 adaptation of J.M. Barrie's classic play was a big hit for the studio despite (or because of) making changes to the material to make it even more kid-friendly by making it less dark and more comedic. The animated Tinker Bell character from Peter Pan also became an icon for the studio, appearing throughout the years on Disney's various television programs (among other uses). A live-action remake is in the planning stages (with David Lowery attached as director), though it may be headed to Disney's upcoming streaming service rather than to theaters.

Talking animals have long been a staple of Disney animated films, but those films typically feature no more than a handful of species. But the 2016 animated comedy Zootopia features anthropomorphic versions of seemingly every mammal on the planet, though the film finds them not in their native habitats but in a modern city environment (with no humans in sight). The well-reviewed film, which has grossed over $1 billion worldwide, is often compared to Disney's live-action/animation hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, as both share a film noir sensibility, mystery/conspiracy storyline, and somewhat more adult themes than the typical Disney outing. A sequel hasn't officially been announced, but it's hard to imagine there won't be one, given that among Disney films only Frozen has grossed more

Featuring cinema's most memorable noodle-eating scene outside of Tampopo, 1955's Lady and the Tramp follows the romantic adventures of two dogs from different socioeconomic classes. It was the first animated feature released by the newly formed Buena Vista, which remains Disney's distribution company to this day (all previous Disney films were distributed by RKO). And despite not coming from widely known source material (it is loosely based on a short story by Ward Greene called "Happy Dan," combined with some earlier original ideas from a Disney artist named Joe Grant, who in real life owned a dog named Lady), it was one of the very few early Disney films to be profitable upon its original release. It has continued to charm audiences in the decades since, which can mean only one thing: A live-action remake is coming, though it will debut on the Disney+ streaming service (which launches in late 2019) rather than in theaters. (The remake is scripted by mumblecore master Andrew Bujalski, which should be ... interesting?)

Disney's best-reviewed and highest-grossing film since The Lion King, this 1999 retelling of Edgar Rice Burroughs's classic story (which, shockingly, was never before animated) is typically considered the final film in Disney's decade-long "Renaissance" period, and it would be followed by a series of uninspired films that connected with neither critics nor moviegoers. But both groups liked Tarzan. The film grossed nearly $450 million (though it also was hugely expensive to make, setting a record at the time for an animated film), and reviewers mostly found the film "thrilling" and "inspired," though a few dinged the storytelling. Tarzan is one of the few Disney animated films that doesn't utilize a musical format. While it does have original songs (written and performed by Phil Collins), they are part of the backing music and not sung by the characters on screen.

After setting one of its previous films (Lilo & Stitch) in Hawaii, Disney visited the nearby(-ish) South Pacific for this 2016 computer-animated musical hit starring Dwayne Johnson and newcomer Auli'i Cravalho in an original story inspired by Polynesian mythology. The soundtrack featured the work of Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda—his first and almost certainly not last contribution to a Disney animated feature.

This 1961 classic, based on the novel of the same name by Dodie Smith, features one of the big screen's most memorable villains, Cruella De Vil (voiced by Betty Lou Gerson, previously the narrator of Cinderella), who, like Mr. Burns, has a fondness for making garments out of puppies. (Simpsons creator Matt Groening was reportedly a big fan of Disney's Dalmatians, with the film's scenes of cartoon dogs watching cartoons on TV inspiring him to have the Simpsons children watch their own cartoon within a cartoon, Itchy and Scratchy). The first Disney animated film set in the real, (then-)present-day world, Dalmatians is also one of the first to get a live-action remake, via a 1996, John Hughes-scripted adaptation starring Glenn Close as De Vil. The original animated film was a hit upon its original release and remains one of the all-time highest-grossing movies, adjusting for inflation.

Notable mainly as the first animated sequel in Disney history (and there would not be another one for 46 years), 1944's music-heavy The Three Caballeros is a direct follow-up to Saludos Amigos, released two years prior. Like its predecessor, Caballeros is an anthology featuring segments based in Latin America (and blending a bit of live action), here linked by a framing story involving Donald Duck.

This 1950 classic marked a return to full-length, bigger-budget animated features for Disney after World War II meant that Disney had neither the finances nor the manpower to make a proper full-length animated feature for much of the 1940s following the 1942 release of Bambi. While it didn't score in the 90s like the studio's first five films, it was a major hit at the time of its release and continues to rank among Disney's handful of all-time greats. A 2015 live-action remake directed by Kenneth Branagh wasn't terrible, but it lacked the animated film's charm.

Disney's final film of the 1950s is another one of the studio's all-time classics, though it would be their final fairy tale adaptation until The Little Mermaid 30 years later. It was the first film ever released in the "Super Technirama 70" widescreen format (later adopted by Spartacus, among others, though not used again by Disney until 1985), and an expensive, time-consuming production all around: Preproduction began in 1951 and repeated delays caused the release date to slip to 1959. Like many early Disney films, it then lost money when first releasedâ€"but, like many of those films, it also became a huge financial success over time thanks to numerous re-releases. Disneyland helped to cement the film's iconic status: A "Sleeping Beauty Castle" attraction was given a prominent place in the theme park four years before the movie even opened, and a representation of the castle has served as the logo on the Walt Disney Pictures title card since 1985.

Disney released a much darker, live-action take on the Sleeping Beauty story in 2014, re-titled Maleficent. Despite mixed reviews, it was enough of a hit that a sequel has been greenlit.

Disney stuck closely to the template established by its previous two hits (The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast) for this family-friendly take on the 1001 Nights folktale—including music by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, joined by Tim Rice—and added starpower in the form of Robin Williams (who voices the Genie). The result is 1992's highest-grossing movie and another two Academy Award trophies for the studio—plus the first Grammy to be won by a Disney animated film (for closing song "A Whole New World"). Guy Ritchie is currently directing a live-action remake with a cast led by Will Smith; it's scheduled for a May 2019 release.

It's the film that launched the Disney Renaissance. Kicking off a decade of wild critical and commercial success for Disney animation following nearly two decades of doldrums, the 28th Disney animated feature very loosely remakes Hans Christian Andersen's story of the same name into a blueprint for the modern Disney animated hit—namely, by returning to the studio's musical roots while also borrowing heavily from the format of a typical Broadway musical. (That formula would come full circle when Disney converted its 1994 hit The Lion King into an actual Broadway musical.) Disney's genius move proved to be enlisting theater veterans Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (of Little Shop of Horrors fame) to provide the music; they would go on to win Oscars for their memorable work on this film and 1991's Beauty and the Beast. (Ashman would die a few years later, but Menken continues to work on Disney animated films to this day.)

Mermaid, needless to say, became an instant, massive, critical and commercial hit—capturing the public's imagination (and wallets) more than any Disney film since at least The Jungle Book more than 20 years prior. And Walt Disney probably would have been proud. The founder himself once wrote a screenplay for an animated Little Mermaid film, at one point intending it to be his follow-up to Snow White, though the script wasn't uncovered until after this Mermaid was already in production.

A live-action adaptation is in the planning stages, possibly with the involvement of Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The financial (though not critical) peak of Disney's 1990s resurgence, The Lion King remains to this day the highest-grossing traditional (i.e., non-computer) animated film in history, with worldwide grosses in excess of $960 million. The film combines an impressive cast (including James Earl Jones, Matthew Broderick, and Jeremy Irons) with songs by Elton John and Tim Rice and a long-gestating African wildlife story that is oh so loosely borrowed from Shakespeare's Hamlet (or, some would argue, the Japanese television series Kimba the White Lion).

The Lion King's box office domination apparently wasn't enough for Disney, as the company then commissioned a Broadway musical adaptation (directed by Julie Taymor) which went on to almost unfathomably massive financial success and six Tony Awards. Next up is a live-action-ish (mostly CGI) film adaptation from director Jon Favreau. The new Lion King, set for release in July, is almost certain to be another huge hit given that it counts Beyoncé, Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Seth Rogen among its impressive roster of voice stars.

Released for the first of many times in 1942, Disney's fifth animated feature is also the studio's fifth straight release to receive a Metascore in the 90s. (There would not be another one until 1991.) A beloved if traumatizing classic that finds the titular young deer attempting to overcome the death of his mother after she is shot and killed by a hunter, Bambi is based on a 1923 novel by Austrian author Felix Salten. Like many of Disney's early films, Bambi was a money loser upon its original release but eventually became (hugely) profitable through subsequent re-releases.

The first Disney animated feature to score above 90 since Bambi back in 1942, this stellar 1991 version of the oft-adapted French fairy tale marked the pinnacle of the studio's creative (and commercial) revival in the 1990s, which saw Disney accelerating to a film-a-year pace. A major box office hit, it was also the first animated film to win a Golden Globe for best picture, and the first to be nominated for a best picture Oscar. (The film received six Oscar nominations in total, winning for score and song.) Bill Condon directed a less-impressive live-action remake in 2017 which nevertheless was an even bigger hit than the animated version, grossing over $1.2 billion to set a record for a live-action musical..

While Disney's first two animated features adapted classic children's stories, the studio's third (debuting with a road show release in late 1940) remains one of the most sui generis and groundbreaking animated films in cinema history: It's an anthology of proto-music videos for eight pieces of classical music, which were recorded and screened in a first-of-its-kind stereo surround sound called "Fantasound." One of the segments, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," features Disney's (literally) iconic Mickey Mouse character, marking his first appearance in a full-length release from the studio. The film has returned to theaters at least nine times following its original run, with some of those screenings (unofficially, but definitely) seeking to capitalize on Fantasia's increasing popularity with fans of psychedelic drugs. (Is there a scene with dancing mushrooms? Why yes, there is.)

Based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, this 1937 musical is Disney's very first full-length animated feature, and it boasts one of the studio's most memorable soundtracks, with songs such as "Whistle While You Work" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come." It was a record-setting box office hit upon its first release, and Snow White has returned to theaters numerous times in the decades since, allowing it to hold on to the title of highest-grossing animated film until 1993 (when it was surpassed by Disney's own Aladdin.) .

Disney's 1941 classic about the titular, big-eared, flying elephant has its origins in an unpublished children's story. Despite its short running time (just 64 minutes), Dumbo was the animation studio's first profitable release since Snow White in 1937, and it went on to become the highest-grossing Disney film of the 1940s and the very first Disney animated film to be released on home video (in 1980). Dumbo is also the next Disney animated film to get a live-action remake—presumably without its racist crows—and there is already a trailer for the Tim Burton-directed film, due on March 29, 2019.

First released in 1940--to fairly disastrous box office results at the time--Disney's best animated feature is based on the 19th century Italian children's novel (full name: La storia di un burattino, or The Adventures of Pinocchio) about a marionette who comes to life as a boy. That story has been adapted dozens of times (both animated and live-action) over the past century, but perhaps never as memorably as Disney's version, which features the studio's most iconic song, "When You Wish Upon a Star." It is yet another one of the classic Disney cartoons scheduled to get a live-action adaptation, with filming expected to begin in 2019.