Coogler Boards Animorphs At Disney Plus
Ryan Coogler just added another ’90s sci-fi touchstone to his slate: a new Animorphs TV series is in "early development at Disney Plus," with the filmmaker set to serve as executive producer, according to Variety. He’s already working on a reboot of The X-Files, and this project pushes his run of nostalgic genre revivals even further.
Bayan Wolcott, who wrote two episodes of Hulu’s upcoming dystopian series The Testaments, is attached to write and executive produce. No casting or directors have been announced yet, and Disney hasn’t shared a timeline for when the series might arrive on the platform.
Why Animorphs Still Hits Hard
K. A. Applegate’s YA saga ran hot between 1996 and 2001, spanning 54 main books plus several spinoffs. For a generation that haunted the teen section at the bookstore, those lurid covers weren’t a gimmick—they hinted at how strange and bracing the stories could get. The premise remains sharp: a group of teenagers discovers Earth is being quietly invaded by "mind-controlling alien slugs called Yeerks." A dying Andalite, the Yeerks’ sworn enemy, passes the kids a desperate gift—the power to turn into any animal they can touch. A young Andalite stranded on Earth later joins the team.
That setup sounds like power fantasy, and sometimes it is. Turning into a gorilla or a tiger is thrilling on the page. Then reality hits. Your parent or principal might be a host for an alien parasite. Every book forced the group to improvise a new plan against long odds, and the victories often came at real cost. Applegate didn’t shy away from hard questions about war and responsibility, whether it meant the loss of a beloved character, the enslavement of an entire peaceful species, or the psychological scars of endless conflict.
It never hit the global saturation of Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, but it carved out a fierce reputation as one of the strongest series about youth resistance. That mix of high-concept sci-fi and moral gray areas is exactly the kind of material that could thrive in a modern serialized adaptation—if handled with care.