Disney didn’t want to miss out on all the songs and dances at this year’s upfronts so it brought along the Savannah Bananas to kick things off with a slightly off-pitch opener to its presentation.
It was apt given that the Bananas’ second baseman Jackson Olson is waltzing off to Dancing with the Stars. It wasn’t the most tuneful of openings, but Disney had an ace up its sleeve: closing out with a three-song performance by Olivia Rodrigo.
During the annual presentation held this year at the Javitz Center in Manhattan, the barnstorming baseball team was followed by Anne Hathaway, star of Disney’s The Devil Wears Prada 2, to introduce new CEO Josh D’Amaro.
The last two years have seen former CEO Bob Iger present on stage – the first time in 30 years – so it makes sense that his successor D’Amaro gets in on the act.
“This is my first upfront as CEO of The Walt Disney Company, so naturally we decided to keep the pressure low and put a few thousand media executives in one room to stare at me,” he said before cracking a joke about the New York Knicks.
The former Parks boss threw a little shade at his rivals. “Everybody, in their own way, is racing to assemble something. Studios. Streaming services. Sports rights. Live events. Brands that audiences feel something about. It is, in a way, a real compliment to this company. Because what they are racing to assemble is, more or less, the picture of what we already are,” he said. “The thing is, you cannot acquire a hundred years of trust. You can’t put generations of belonging on a balance sheet.”
Next up was FX heartthrob Paul Anthony Kelly, who played John F. Kennedy Jr. in Love Story, to introduce ad boss Rita Ferro.
Then came the sports: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was joined by Joe Buck to talk up the fact that Disney has the Super Bowl in 2027. Jason Kelce then brought out a lineup of Super Bowl MVPs including Troy Aikman, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Steve Young, Emmitt Smith, Desmond Howard, Jerry Rice, Hines Ward, Kurt Warner and Nick Foles to promote this fact.
Goodell had some fun onstage, hugging Buck in the increasingly aggressive way that he has been known to hug players at the draft.
Then it was onto television and film with intermittent promotions for shows such as Hulu NFL drama The Land with stars William H. Macy, Mandy Moore and Christopher Meloni onstage.
They were followed by a Dancing with the Stars moment with pros including Mark Ballas and Val Chmerkovskiy; Ke Huy Quan, known to some as Short Round and to younger fans as Gary DeSnake in Zootopia 2; Sigourney Weaver promoting the Disney+ premiere of Avatar: Fire and Ash and her role in The Mandalorian and Grogu; and Rosario Dawson talking up the Season 2 launch of Ahsoka on Disney+.
Then came the movie stars: Robert Downey Jr. followed a Marvel “hype sizzle” ahead of the launch of Avengers: Doomsday in December, before being interrupted by Loki star Tom Hiddleston to promote his “side hustle” Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston for Nat Geo, and Paul Bettany to show a trailer for WandaVision spinoff VisionQuest.
“Twenty years ago, Kevin Feige officially asked me to play Tony Stark in Iron Man. It changed my life,” Downey said.
There were some linear stars onstage including Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson and High Potential’s Kaitlin Olsen and Scrubs “throuple” Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke and Donald Faison.
Things quickly got creepy with American Horror Story. Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Gabourey Sidibe, Billie Lourd and Emma Roberts revealed that the aforementioned FX Love Story heartthrob Kelly would be joining the Ryan Murphy-produced series.
“We’ve been expecting you, Paul,” said Paulson.
Things remained creepy with a trailer of FX’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards. Kaia Gerber, Igby Rigney and Home Gere were then joined by Lindsay Lohan, Shailene Woodley and Kit Harington to show off Hulu’s Count My Lies, followed by FX’s Olivia Colman and Brie Larson starrer Cry Wolf, and Clare Danes and Ewan McGregor to talk up Hulu’s The Spot.
Don’t worry, from there it was more sports. Shaquille O’Neal, with some “Shaq stats,” was joined by Dallas Mavericks star Cooper Flagg and commentator Kenny Smith as well as, in a surprise move, New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson, fresh from helping the team sweep Philadelphia 76ers to reach the NBA Eastern Conference Finals.
Arguably the biggest cheer of the night went to Billie Jean King, who is the subject of Give Me the Ball, a documentary directed by Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff that highlights King’s impact on tennis and global social activism. “We’re just getting started,” the tennis legend said before hitting a number of autographed tennis balls into the quarter-zip-vest-loving crowd.
Then came Jimmy Kimmel to close things out with his annual roast. Kimmel joked that he’s been through so much “bullsh*t” over the last 12 months that it made him “appreciate this bullsh*t” at the upfronts.
Kimmel’s daughter Jane then came out to introduce Rodrigo to perform. Amazon might have had Diplo and Shaboozey at its upfront afterparty, but Disney flexed its muscle with a three-song set featuring Rodrigo’s new single “Drop Dead,” the Misery Business-esque “Good 4 You” and “Get Him Back!”
There was a rather sweet ending as Rodrigo pulled Jane Kimmel onstage for a final gang vocal.
“That’s it from me, probably forever,” joked her dad moments earlier. We’ll see next year.
