In December 2020, Disney announced a short spin-off series based on “Princess and the Frog” featuring the movie princess Tiana. The show was going to follow Tiana right after the events and try to learn how to be a princess. In early March 2025, Disney announced that the series was cancelled as they were moving away from long form content on their streaming service, Disney+.
This show has been highly emancipated by fans of the movie and it seems off that Disney was so quick to cancel it. The original cast from the movie and famed composer Randy Newman, who also worked on the film were all slated to come back for this project.
The show was also going to feature a CGI, 2D hyped animation style to honor the original since it was the last 2D movie the studio has released.
It has been stated by people working on the project that a few of the songs were already finished along with some of the voice acting.
Disney hasn’t had the best of luck with their “straight to Disney+” content, with their last series based on “Moana” being turned into “Moana 2.” This isn’t really an excuse to just shelf a project that has already been in the works for years, and one that was so highly anticipated. If they want to move away from that type of content that’s fine, it’s normally not that great anyway, but don’t just cancel projects that are already being worked on. But there’s a chance that there is more to this than just them wanting to move away from that kind of content.
Since the Trump presidential win at the end of last year, there has been a push from many companies to resort back to more conservative ideas and practices. The cancellation of this show in particular is suspicious of that. This is Disney’s first African American princess, which is partly why the show was being created in the first place. The announcement for the show came out in 2020, which was a pretty progressive year in the sense that people started to call out companies more and more. So Disney probably thought it would be a good idea to save themselves by announcing a show based on Tiana. But now that things have changed Disney is trying to backtrack and in return is just making themselves look terrible.
To add to that Disney just finished releasing the Disney+ original show “Win or Lose” which is a great show overall, but it does feature an openly Christian character. That isn’t a problem by any means but it’s just a little weird that right after they release a show featuring strong religious themes they cancel a show with one of the only African American characters.
According to Variety from 2020-2023 Disney+ was the second highest streaming service to cancel original content, with 21.1% of their original shows being canceled or cut. So this means that they cancel a lot of their programs, and this could just be a result of the age of streaming. It’s just weird timing that they cancel this show, but release a show with religious themes and that we have a political climate that is very old school.
It’s just a shame that this show had to be caught in the middle of everything and had to be cancelled. There was a lot of potential for this series and hopefully one day we’ll get to see it, but for now we can only hope for the best and continue to support animation.