Disney has released the official trailer for Disney Worldbuilders, a new feature-length documentary exploring how some of the company’s most influential storytellers transform ideas on a screen into worlds audiences can physically enter.
Directed by Academy Award- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Leslie Iwerks, the documentary brings together creative leaders from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Disney Experiences for an unusually broad conversation about imagination, storytelling and the process of worldbuilding.
Among the filmmakers and executives appearing in the documentary are Bob Iger, James Cameron, Jon Favreau, Kevin Feige, Jennifer Lee, Pete Docter, Dave Filoni, Jared Bush and Josh D’Amaro.
Together, they discuss franchises and worlds including Avatar, Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pixar, Frozen and Zootopia.
But Disney Worldbuilders is not simply a documentary about successful films.
Its central idea is what happens after those stories leave the screen.
Disney has spent decades developing characters, locations and fictional universes that eventually become attractions, lands and immersive experiences inside its theme parks around the world.
The new trailer demonstrates how closely those two creative processes are connected.
A filmmaker may first imagine a world for a movie, but Imagineers must then determine how guests can physically enter it, move through it and feel as though the fictional environment exists around them.
That requires a very different form of storytelling.
Sets become architecture.
Background details become environments.
Vehicles, creatures and locations that may exist digitally in a film have to function as convincing physical experiences capable of being visited by millions of people.
The documentary explores the collaboration behind that transformation and the creative relationships connecting Disney’s filmmakers with Walt Disney Imagineering.
James Cameron discusses the expansion of Avatar beyond Pandora as seen on screen, while Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige reflects on how superhero stories can become immersive environments.
Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni represent another enormous corner of the Disney universe through their work on Star Wars, while Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter, Walt Disney Animation Studios chief creative officer Jared Bush and Jennifer Lee discuss the evolution of animated worlds and characters.
Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro provides another perspective: what happens when those stories are translated into destinations audiences can actually visit.
The documentary also looks forward.
Disney has confirmed that Worldbuilders includes behind-the-scenes access to upcoming lands and projects currently taking shape at Disney destinations around the world.
That makes the film partly a celebration of existing Disney worlds and partly a preview of where the company intends to take them next.
For Leslie Iwerks, the subject is particularly personal.
Her grandfather, Ub Iwerks, was one of Walt Disney’s earliest creative partners and co-created Mickey Mouse. Her father, Don Iwerks, became an influential technical innovator at Walt Disney Studios. Both were later recognised as Disney Legends.
Leslie Iwerks has continued that connection through documentary filmmaking.
Her previous projects include The Pixar Story, Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible, The Imagineering Story and Disneyland Handcrafted.
Disney Worldbuilders effectively continues the story explored across several of those films.
The Imagineering Story examined the people and technologies responsible for building Disney’s physical attractions.
Disneyland Handcrafted returned to the extraordinary construction of Walt Disney’s original park.
Worldbuilders moves the story into the present and future, focusing on the generation of creators who grew up experiencing Disney stories themselves and are now responsible for building the next ones.
One of the recurring ideas discovered by Iwerks during production was how many of those enormously successful filmmakers traced their own creative ambitions back to childhood visits to Disneyland or encounters with Disney storytelling.
They began as fans.
Now they are responsible for creating the worlds that may inspire the next generation of filmmakers, artists and Imagineers.
The official trailer moves rapidly between interviews, archive footage, films, concept art, theme park environments and glimpses of projects still under development.
The result reveals worldbuilding as something larger than any individual movie, attraction or franchise.
A story can inspire a physical place.
That place can inspire another creator.
And that creator may eventually build an entirely new story.
It is a creative cycle that Disney Worldbuilders traces back to Walt Disney himself and the idea that Disneyland would continue evolving as long as imagination remained.
Disney Worldbuilders will have its world premiere at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event in Anaheim on August 16, 2026.
The feature documentary then premieres globally on Disney+ on August 20, 2026.
Watch the official trailer below.
