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    Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground has found its first major home outside Netflix, and it is Disney.

    The production company is teaming with Disney Kids & Family, formerly Disney Branded Television, to develop Journey, an original animated fantasy series. The show follows a young heroine who heads into forbidden lands to uncover the truth about her father’s disappearance, discovering powerful magic in herself along the way. It is created and executive produced by Matt Munn, whose credits include Ice Age: Collision Course and Spies in Disguise.

    Back in April, I wrote that Higher Ground going independent was not a retreat but an expansion, and that Hollywood should be paying attention. Journey is the receipt. When the Obamas confirmed they were ending their eight-year first-look run with Netflix to work across multiple studios, the open question was what independence would actually produce. The answer is a Disney animated series with global and franchise upside, landed within months of cutting the cord. That is not a company drifting. That is a company executing a plan.

    Ayo Davis, president of Disney Kids & Family, framed the series around the heroine at its center, calling it an epic adventure built on courage that inspires the people around her. Davis said the show digs into resilience, self-discovery, and the power of believing in something bigger than yourself.

    Jessie Dicovitsky, Higher Ground’s head of television, positioned Journey as a continuation of the company’s mission rather than a departure from it. She described the series as a true original that takes bold swings, blending adventure, imagination, and music, and said the company is proud to build on its history of meaningful stories for kids and families.

    That history is not thin. Since launching in 2018, Higher Ground has stacked up an Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentary in American Factory, Oscar-nominated films in Rustin and American Symphony, and family programming like Ada Twist, Scientist. The company already proved it can win across formats. Journey extends that into animated fantasy, a lane with real worldwide reach.

    The bigger story is what this signals. Higher Ground bet on itself by going independent, and the first card it played is a Disney animated series aimed at kids everywhere. The freedom to work with everybody was always the point. Now we are watching what they do with it, and the answer so far is: move fast and aim wide.

    — REAVES // @wildreaves

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