Disney Villains show and the future of Disney’s Hollywood Studios

_{Updated Oct. 14, 2024; original version published Sept. 3, 2024.}

Disney Villains take over Sunset Showcase in new show

Villains will arrive at Walt Disney World sooner than expected, kind of. While guests wait for Villains Land to open at the Florida resort’s Magic Kingdom — a project still several years away — a new Disney Villains show will open in summer 2025 down the road at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Performing inside the Sunset Showcase near Rock ‘n Roller Coaster, the new production will take place within the “mysterious, reflective realm of the Magic Mirror,” Disney said when announcing the show on Sept. 3, 2024. (The ominous Magic Mirror figure first appeared as the Evil Queen’s aide in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”)

The show will star “dozens” of bad guys, Disney said, but seemingly only three of them — Captain Hook, Maleficent, and Cruella de Vil — will appear onstage in person, “breaking through the glass” to perform a song.

In the concept artwork for the show, we spot:

• Magic Mirror (“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”)
• Captain Hook (“Peter Pan”)
• Queen of Hearts (“Alice in Wonderland”)
• Maleficent (“Sleeping Beauty”)
• Cruella de Vil (“One Hundred and One Dalmatians”)
• Ursula (“The Little Mermaid”)
• Jafar (“Aladdin”)
• Scar (“The Lion King”)
• Hades (“Hercules”)
• Yzma (“The Emperor’s New Groove”)

Disney has not announced a name for the show or a specific opening date at the time of this writing.

Lightning McQueen driving out of the Sunset

To make way for the new Disney Villains show, the most recent occupant of the Sunset Showcase, Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, closed. The attraction’s final day of operation was Oct. 7, 2024.

Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, which debuted in 2019, was an 11-minute show starring a sole Lightning McQueen Audio-Animatronics figure (similar, if not identical, to Lightning’s likeness in Radiator Springs Racers out at Disney California Adventure). Lightning taught the audience how to be a racer, utilizing his racing simulator and on-screen appearances by other characters from the “Cars” movies, many of which were voiced by their original actors.

Didn’t get a chance to see Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy? Watch the full show in our video from opening week:

The departure is hardly a farewell for the “Cars” franchise at Disney World. Two major “Cars” attractions will replace Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America at Magic Kingdom in the coming years. (Incidentally, the project will be next-door neighbors with Villains Land in that park.)

The future of Disney’s Hollywood Studios

The Disney Villains show is one of several projects in the works for Hollywood Studios.

“The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure” will also open in summer 2025, following a delay from Disney’s originally announced fall 2024 timeframe. The new production will revive the indoor theater formerly home to “Voyage of the Little Mermaid” in Animation Courtyard — the first time the venue will be open since the 2020 pandemic park closures.

Disney will begin construction in 2025 on a “Monsters, Inc.” land at Hollywood Studios, complete with a suspended roller coaster. The location of the “Monsters, Inc.” land within the park remains unclear; the new Villains show seemingly puts Sunset Showcase and the surrounding area out of the running.

In 2026, just in time for the release of the new movie “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” the film’s stars will debut in a new version of Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

What and where is Sunset Showcase, the Disney Villains show’s venue?

Sunset Showcase — the venue where the new Disney Villains show will perform come summer 2025 — is located in the Sunset Boulevard area of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, deep within an annex courtyard adjacent to Rock ‘n Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith.

Disney Villains’ arrival to Sunset Showcase will mark two Villains-centric live productions in the same vicinity, with “Fantasmic!” being performed just across the way in the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater. Sunset Boulevard, it seems, is something of a Villains Land in and of itself.

Sunset Showcase opened in 2015 with the intention of being a flex space for special events. It’s achieved varying degrees of success in this purpose, with some offerings lasting longer than others. The venue’s debut experience at Club Disney, a character dance party.

In 2016 came Club Villain, a $99 dinner show hosted by Doctor Facilier from “The Princess and the Frog” (see video below).

Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy debuted in 2019 as a decidedly more long-term-feeling experience than its predecessors.

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