Why Did Disney’s ‘Hexed’ Change Its Main Character to a Girl?

From sweeping layoffs to new upper management, there are big changes happening behind the scenes at Disney. There are changes happening on screen too, though, with none more apparent than the surprising update to the main character of Hexed.

Plenty of movie projects undergo major changes during production, but Disney fans were surprised when a presentation at CinemaCon 2026 in Las Vegas this month revealed the protagonist of the studio’s upcoming animated movie Hexed, out this Thanksgiving, has inexplicably switched from hero to heroine.

The coming-of-age fantasy film, set to be Disney’s 65th animated feature film, was first revealed during Disney’s Destination D23 event back in August 2025, where it was first shared the main character in the movie would be a teenage boy.

According to the film’s initial logline, Hexed was going to follow “an awkward teenage boy and his Type-A mom” as they “discover that what makes him unusual, might just be magical powers that will turn their lives and a secret world of magic, upside down.”

However, less than a year later, a new synopsis reveals the protagonist of the film is now a teenage girl.

According to Variety, the movie will follow “a teenage oddball and her Type A mom, who discovers her weirdness is actually hidden magic, transporting them to a world where magic can run free.”

The teen, named Billie, will be voiced by Hailee Steinfeld (who voices Gwen Stacy in the animated Spider-Verse movies), with Rashida Jones playing her mom, Alice.

It’s unclear why production swapped the main character’s gender, a change that happened sometime in the past eight months and is now drawing comparisons to already existing Disney titles such as Halloweentown and The Owl House—both about teenage girls who are whisked away to magical realms where they unlock powerful abilities and form new bonds with their families, in particular their mothers.

Online, it seems many Disney fans were excited to see a story about magic with a central male protagonist and a focus on the relationship between a mother and son. That said, it’s possible the box office failure of Disney-Pixar’s 2025 space adventure Elio gave execs cold feet about telling another tale about an eccentric young boy embarking on a journey of self-discovery, despite being very different stories.

Hexed releases in theaters on November 25, 2026.