Highly anticipated Disney+ series dumped as studio abandons long-form content on streaming service

Disney+ has abandoned a highly anticipated series five years in the making as it changes its approach towards streaming.

Walt Disney Animation Studios has officially shelved its highly anticipated Tiana series in the wake of the studio’s decision to stop making long-form, episodic content for its streaming service, Disney+.

The Tiana series was first announced in December 2020, with voice actress Anika Noni Rose set to reprise her role as Tiana from the 2009 film The Princess and the Frog – a trailblazing animation centred on Disney’s first ever Black princess.

However, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has officially pulled the plug on the series as the company shifts its business strategy for streaming.

Disney’s plans for The Princess and the Frog spin-off series called Tiana has been abandoned. Picture: Disney

Sources told the outlet that “despite best efforts, including several changes to the creative team, Tiana ultimately could not get to where it needed to be given production costs”.

Alongside Tiana, an unannounced feature-length project planned for Disney+ has also reportedly been cancelled.

Walt Disney Animation Studios has new plans for its Disney+ streaming service. Picture: Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The news comes months after Pixar, a subsidiary of Disney, announced they would no longer prioritise developing episodic content after releasing the animated series Dream Productions and Win or Lose on Disney+.

The latter was the studio’s first-ever long-form series and was due to break ground with a transgender storyline. However, that story arc was abandoned ahead of the series’ premiere last month with references to a character’s gender identity removed by Disney, although the character remains on the show.

Win Or Lose premiered in February 2025 and was the first of only two long-form series on the Disney.

Disney’s decision to favour films over episodics also comes after they backflipped on plans for a Moana 2 series.

The spin-off to the highly successful 2016 Moana movie – it grossed more than $1.09 billion at the global box office – was in the works in 2020.

Disney had planned to release a Moana series but instead turned the project into the feature film, Moana 2. Picture: Disney

But after much thought, the powers that be at Disney concluded that the best financial pay-off is by releasing movies exclusively in cinemas and Moana 2, the movie, was born.

“We decided to convert it to a film [from a TV series] when we saw that the 2016 version of Moana was the most streamed film of the year in the United States in 2023 on all streaming platforms,” Disney CEO Bob Iger shared in a conference call. “It gave us reason to think, well, maybe it shouldn’t be a TV series, but a movie. And so it will be.”

“We were impressed with what we saw and knew it deserved a theatrical release,” he added.

The Moana 2 movie, released in Australia last November, has grossed more than $1.6 billion in the box office worldwide.

Originally published as Highly anticipated Disney+ series dumped as studio abandons long-form content on streaming service