Raya and the Last Dragon is an upcoming American computer-animated adventure fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Animation Studios for distribution by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. The 59th film produced by the studio, it is directed by Don Hall and Carlos Lopez Estrada, co-directed by Paul Briggs and John Ripa, produced by Osnat Shurer and Peter Del Vecho, written by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, and music score composed by James Newton Howard.
It is also the first film produced by Disney Animation without any involvement from John Lasseter since 2005's Chicken Little. The film features the voices of Kelly Marie Tran as the titular Raya and Awkwafina as Sisu, the last dragon. Raya and the Last Dragon is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on March 12, 2021.
On May 24, 2018, That Hashtag Show reported that Walt Disney Animation Studios was developing an animated film titled Dragon Empire, which would be the directorial debut of story artists Paul Briggs and Dean Wellins, written by Kiel Murray. In October of the same year, Deadline reported that Adele Lim was hired to retouch the script and that Osnat Shurer had been hired to produce the movie.
On August 24, 2019, Disney officially announced the film during their D23 Expo Walt Disney Animation Studios' presentation panel. In August 2020, it was announced that Don Hall and Carlos Lopez Estrada, the latter who had joined Disney Animation in 2019, were now taking over the reins as directors, with Briggs remaining as co-director and John Ripa joining him. In addition, Qui Nguyen joined Lim as co-writer and Peter Del Vecho joined Shurer as producer
The film is set in a fictional fantasy land called Kumandra, inspired by Southeast Asian cultures from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Laos. To conduct research, the filmmakers and the production team traveled to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
James Newton Howard will compose the score for Raya and the Last Dragon. The film marks the fourth time Howard scored an animated Disney film, after Dinosaur, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet. Long ago, in the fantasy world of Kumandra, humans, and dragons lived together in harmony. But when sinister monsters known as the Druun threatened the land, the dragons sacrificed themselves to save humanity.
Now, 500 years later, those same monsters have returned and it’s up to a lone warrior, Raya, to track down the last dragon in order to finally stop the Druun for good. However, along her journey, she'll learn that it'll take more than dragon magic to save the world it's going to take trust as well.
March 12, 2021, theatrical release date does indeed signify that Raya and the Last Dragon is positioning itself as next year’s first blockbuster. Raya looks like the biggest movie of next year (all due respect to Mortal Kombat, The Kings Man, Peter Rabbit 2, Respect, and Ghostbusters Afterlife) prior to the April 2 (my birthday!) release of No Time to Die.
Ironically, back in 2019, the industry was up in arms waiting for Captain Marvel to rescue it in early March after Glass (very slightly) underperformed in January and The LEGO Movie 2 outright bombed in February. But in this “new normal,” interested parties will breathe a sigh of relief if it only takes until early March to have a genuine theatrical smash hit in 2021.
Coming weeks after Disney officially signaled that it would emphasize streaming over everything else (including theatrical), the splashy theatrical trailer and theatrical release date do show that, for now, Walt Disney is still committed to keeping the lights on in multiplexes as long as they aren’t losing buckets of money for doing so.
Fair or not, the suppressed American grosses for Tenet ($50 million domestic after six weeks) and Honest Thief (which opened with 1/3 the standard $11-$14 million debut for a Liam Neeson actioner) shows that Hollywood had little choice but to move their biggies to safer waters. As long as theatrical animated originals like Raya still hit pay dirt, there will still be a huge incentive to make them.
I’d imagine that the colorful, intense, and action-focused fantasy stylings of Raya and the Last Dragon would have made buckets of money had it opened as intended on November 25, 2020. It was positioned as this year’s “princess fairy tale spectacular,” opening in the same frame as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Princess, and the Frog, Tangled, Frozen, Moana, and Frozen II.
That Moana got first billing in the “from the studio that brought you” text signifies just how popular the 2016 smash has been over the last four years, including spending much of this year as the “top trending” movie on Disney+ give or take a new release or seasonal offering.
Had it opened this year as intended, it would have likely been leggy as hell with the year’s official year-end fantasy biggie (Dune) possibly playing mostly to older audiences and/or hardcore fans. Raya would have potentially had Frozen legs as the only game in town (alongside Disney’s own Eternals) for all-audience fantasy blockbuster movies until early 2021.
But now, for better or worse, it’s in the Alice in Wonderland/Captain Marvel/Zootopia slot. To be fair, all three of those movies topped $1 billion while Moana “only” grossed $658 million amid a brutally competitive year-end slate (Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Trolls, Sing, and Rogue One). So this new release date may be a blessing.
Raya and the Last Dragon Cast
- Kelly Marie Tran as Raya, a fearless and passionate warrior who has been training to become a Guardian of the Dragon Gem. To restore peace to Kumandra, she embarks in search of the last dragon.
- Awkwafina as Sisu, a water dragon who can transform into a human and is the last dragon in existence.
Raya and the Last Dragon Release Date
Raya and the Last Dragon was originally scheduled to be released in the United States on November 25, 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film's release was delayed to March 12, 2021.
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