The fantasy genre keeps proving it can carry both the weight of billion-dollar franchises and the delicate spark of something smaller and stranger, and the next three years are shaping up to be a genuine test of which approach lands with audiences still hungry for escape. The list making the rounds right now puts live-action How to Train Your Dragon 2 at number ten, Practical Magic 2 at nine, and Frozen III at eight, but the real story is how these projects sit inside a larger moment where studios are betting that familiar magic can still feel new if the execution respects what made people care in the first place.
Live-action remakes usually arrive with a defensive tone, as if the studio already expects the internet to complain about the loss of hand-drawn soul. How to Train Your Dragon 2 sidesteps some of that noise because the same director who guided the animated trilogy is back, and the first live-action film showed he understood the difference between copying frames and protecting the emotional through-line. The sequel story itself carries heavier stakes than the original—loss, legacy, the cost of leadership—so a faithful recreation could land harder than the 2025 film if it keeps the same attention to dragon movement and the quiet moments between Hiccup and Toothless. That combination of proven creative continuity and a stronger narrative engine is why the anticipation sits higher than most remake projects even though the date sits in 2027.
Practical Magic 2 leans into a different kind of nostalgia. The 1998 original worked because Bullock and Kidman played the friction between responsibility and desire with real comic timing inside a world where witchcraft felt domestic rather than epic. Bringing both actresses back alongside Channing and Wiest creates an instant tonal anchor that newer entries in the legacy-sequel wave have sometimes lacked. The addition of Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, and Joey King suggests the film wants to expand the coven without erasing the original quartet’s chemistry. If the script keeps the balance between spells and sisterhood that made the first one rewatchable, this could become the rare legacy sequel that feels like a hangout movie instead of a checklist.
Frozen III arrives with the longest runway of the three. Eight years after Frozen II is a long time in Disney’s release calendar, yet the franchise’s grip on multiple generations remains unusually tight. The musical numbers in the first two films succeeded because they advanced character conflict instead of pausing the story, and the same creative team returning means that standard is likely to hold. What makes the wait feel charged is how Frozen sits at the intersection of Disney’s theatrical dominance and the streaming-era debate over whether big musicals still need a cinema screen. If the third film delivers another set-piece like “Into the Unknown,” it could reinforce that theatrical event status while giving families a reason to return to theaters instead of waiting for the Disney+ drop.
These three entries also highlight a split in how the genre is evolving. One is a live-action translation of an animated peak, one is a mid-budget adult-leaning comedy sequel, and one is a full-throttle Disney musical continuation. That spread matters because audiences have shown they will show up for fantasy when it offers either spectacle or specificity, but they tune out when projects feel like expensive IP placeholders. The source piece correctly notes that the genre’s current health comes from both the blockbusters and the more intimate films like All of Us Strangers, yet the upcoming slate leans heavily toward the former. The risk is that studios interpret the success of Wicked as permission to greenlight every property with magic in the logline rather than asking whether each story actually needs the fantasy framework.
My own ranking of anticipation would shuffle the order slightly once more projects are factored in. Wicked: For Good sits at the top because Part One already proved the material can sustain two films without feeling stretched, and the second half carries the darker political and romantic threads that the first only teased. The live-action How to Train Your Dragon sequel would sit just behind it because the first film’s fidelity gives the follow-up a higher floor than most remakes. Practical Magic 2 and Frozen III would trade places with a pair of original projects still in development—one a grounded take on mythic creatures in modern settings, the other an adult fantasy drama from a director with a track record for visual poetry. The remaining slots would go to a rumored Narnia return, a new take on The Dark Tower that finally respects the source’s scope, and two smaller titles that treat magic as metaphor rather than set dressing.
What separates genuine anticipation from marketing noise is whether the creative team has demonstrated they understand the original’s emotional contract with the audience. The source piece flags this when it praises the How to Train Your Dragon director’s commitment to the animated trilogy’s spirit. That same principle applies across the board: Kidman and Bullock’s willingness to return signals they still see value in the characters, and the Frozen team’s history of musical storytelling gives the third film a built-in advantage over projects assembled by committee. When those conditions are met, fantasy stops being background noise and becomes the reason people line up.
The broader cultural moment rewards this kind of continuity. After years of fractured release schedules and endless universe-building, viewers appear ready for stories that feel self-contained even when they belong to larger worlds. The source mentions expansive franchises like Wicked alongside art-leaning titles like All of Us Strangers, and that tension is exactly where the next wave of fantasy will be won or lost. If How to Train Your Dragon 2, Practical Magic 2, and Frozen III all deliver on their respective promises, they could extend the genre’s current hot streak rather than simply riding it.
