Disney Animation Is Already Shaping Its Next Original Adventure With “Clay”

We haven’t even had the chance to experience all the magic waiting for us in Hexed, and Disney Animation is already beginning to shape its next original big-screen adventure.

As we inch closer to Hexed opening this Thanksgiving, Walt Disney Animation Studios used D23 to look a little further into its theatrical future. And while familiar worlds like Frozen and Zootopia are preparing for more adventures of their own, Disney isn’t stepping away from creating something completely new.

Because following Hexed, it will be time to meet Flip and Mushi in Clay.

The all-new original animated film is heading to theaters in November 2028, with Oscar and Emmy winner Kieran Culkin leading the voice cast as Flip.

And Disney is having a little fun with one of its most familiar storytelling traditions.

Over the decades, we have watched plenty of great Disney mentors guide their students toward becoming the people — or heroes — they were always meant to be.

But what happens when the mentor is actually pretty terrible at his job?

Meet Flip.

Flip has decided that he is going to become the next great mentor of his village. There is just one little problem with that plan: he might not actually be ready to mentor anyone.

Things become even more complicated when Flip is assigned his very first student, Mushi, a literal ball of clay who has only just been born.

So, naturally, Flip does what any truly inspirational Disney mentor would do.

He runs away in the middle of the night.

Yeah, we have some work to do here.

Unfortunately for Flip — and perhaps fortunately for Mushi — escaping his new responsibility isn’t going to be quite that easy. Mushi proves to be inescapable, completely chaotic and now very much Flip’s responsibility.

Soon the unlikely pair find themselves venturing into a fantastical forest, where Flip has one particularly important job ahead of him.

Keep Mushi alive.

While we only have the earliest details about Clay, the setup already carries some of that familiar Disney odd-couple energy. Putting a reluctant would-be mentor together with a newly created character who knows practically nothing about the world leaves plenty of room for humor, chaos and, knowing Disney, probably a few emotional punches along the way.

There is also something rather fitting about Mushi being made from clay.

Clay can be shaped into practically anything.

With Mushi entering this world as a blank slate, we have to wonder how much of the story will revolve around discovering who Mushi wants to become rather than simply becoming whatever Flip — or anyone else — believes they should be.

And perhaps our terrible mentor might learn a few things from his student along the way.

Clay also gives us a better look at what the next few years of Walt Disney Animation Studios are beginning to look like.

This November, Hexed will introduce audiences to another completely new world through a teenage girl who discovers that what made her different was actually magic. Now Clay is waiting in the wings as another original story, arriving alongside the continuation of some of Disney’s biggest established franchises.

That balance is important.

Disney Animation has an enormous library of worlds audiences already love, but every Frozen, Encanto or Zootopia had to begin somewhere. They were once the new stories asking audiences to take a chance and step into an unfamiliar world.

Come November 2028, it will be Flip and Mushi’s turn.

For now, there is still plenty about Clay waiting to be molded into shape.

But Disney Animation’s next original adventure is officially taking form.