Disney brings its “worldbuilders” concept to Disney+ with a panel featuring top creators from Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and animation

Disney used D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event to spotlight how it builds movies into places. In a panel conversation now streaming on Disney+, the company’s top creative executives and filmmakers unpack “Disney Worldbuilders,” a new film arriving Thursday on Disney+ that frames worldbuilding as a companywide craft that connects stories, technology and real-world experiences.

The discussion brought together director Leslie Iwerks, a longtime Disney storytelling figure who is an Academy Award- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker and the granddaughter of Disney Legend Ub Iwerks. She was joined by Pete Docter, Chief Creative Officer of Pixar; Jon Favreau, director of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu; Kevin Feige, President and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel; Dave Filoni, President and Chief Creative Officer of Lucasfilm; and Jared Bush, Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Josh D’Amaro, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, set the tone by arguing that the Disney story model is built to outlast a single viewing. “A great story doesn’t end when the credits roll,” he said, describing how a “place that you can actually walk into” is something guests can experience and share. D’Amaro tied that approach to Disney’s network of creative roles, including filmmakers, imagineers and cast members, describing the effort as a collaborative, global pipeline rather than a one-off product.

Iwerks opened the conversation by explaining the inspiration behind “Disney Worldbuilders.” She said that while directing Disneyland Handcrafted, one photograph of Walt Disney riding the mine train through Nature’s Wonderland stayed with her. She described wanting to understand “what it felt like” to go through Walt’s lands with families and leaders around the world. Since she could not ask Walt directly, she said she turned the question to “today’s worldbuilders,” using modern creators to bridge past vision with current execution.

The creators described how their industries translate from screens to spaces, sometimes in surprisingly technical ways. Docter, speaking from a Pixar perspective, said for his team “it’s all in the computer,” making the experience of walking into a realized environment feel “overwhelming” because fans first encounter those worlds as two-dimensional images.

Bush, representing Walt Disney Animation Studios, described a different kind of transformation. He said animation starts with no physical set to shoot against, moving from ideas in people’s heads to drawings and then into a “real-life place.” He recalled visiting Zootopia in Shanghai Disney Resort for the first time and said it brought him to tears, explaining that hundreds of people worked on the original Zootopia film to make it feel lived in. In his view, that preparation is what allows park guests to step into the setting and discover details alongside the people who created the story.

The panel also emphasized continuity across time and franchises, presenting worldbuilding as something that must satisfy different generations and fan categories at once. Favreau said Walt Disney “always presented the past and the future,” pointing to how Main Street and Tomorrowland sit in tension, with the “audience” portrayed as the present. In his framing, preserving the aesthetic foundations Walt set out helps the company evolve without breaking the feeling that the worlds remain consistent.

Filoni added that Disney has to serve multiple cohorts within a single IP. He described Star Wars fandom as segmented by groups such as original trilogy fans, prequel fans, sequel trilogy fans, Clone Wars fans and expanded-universe fans, each with different interests. He said the park is a place where those groups can be brought together by a shared love of Star Wars.

The panel offered an example of how even small technical prototypes can become iconic real-world attractions. Feige described early test work connected to Avengers Campus at Disneyland Resort. He recalled seeing a piece of steel that moved on rails and flipped, starting small and then scaling up. Over time, he said the effect became a defining feature, with Spider-Man now “soar[ing] over Avengers Campus” as a live, guest-facing experience.

For investors and business watchers, the deeper announcement is that Disney is treating worldbuilding not only as creative branding, but as a repeatable capability across film, streaming and theme parks. The company’s executives also used the panel to reinforce internal alignment between storytelling talent and physical experience design, a strategy that can help preserve IP value across channels while keeping fans engaged beyond the release cycle. The “Disney Worldbuilders” project, streamed on Disney+ and anchored by a high-profile panel, also functions as a marketing platform for how the company’s entertainment ecosystem connects.

Still, the company did not provide additional commercial details in the panel description, such as production costs, expected subscriber impact, or specific timelines beyond the Thursday Disney+ arrival date. The discussion also focused on creative process and philosophy more than measurable outcomes, so it is not possible from the available material to quantify how these worldbuilding efforts translate into incremental park attendance, merchandise demand, or streaming retention.

What to watch next is how “Disney Worldbuilders” itself expands on these themes and whether Disney uses the film to preview new or evolving experiences across resorts and Disney+ programming. With multiple franchise leaders on stage, the company appears to be positioning worldbuilding as a shared corporate language, one that could shape future creative launches and how Disney packages them for both digital and physical audiences.