Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Clay Hands Kieran Culkin the Worst Mentor in Disney History

Every Disney fan knows the mentor: the wise elder who appears at the exact moment the hero needs guidance. Walt Disney Animation Studios used its D23 showcase to ask a dangerous question about that tradition. What if the next Disney mentor stunk?

That is the premise of Clay, an original animated feature arriving in theaters in November 2028, directed by Fawn Veerasunthorn – who directed Wish and co-directs the upcoming Hexed – and starring Kieran Culkin as Flip. Animation chief Jared Bush laid out the story with a grin: Flip has chosen to be his village’s next great mentor, and in an annual ritual he is assigned his first student, a literal ball of clay born that very moment, named Mushi. Like all inspiring mentors, Flip runs away in the middle of the night. It does not work. Mushi is inescapable, and pure chaos, and Flip finds himself out in a fantastical forest, responsible for keeping his student alive on a journey neither of them chose.

Culkin is the joke and the heart

Casting is destiny in animation, and this choice is inspired. Culkin won an Emmy playing Roman Roy, a man whose confidence and competence live on entirely different planets, and an Academy Award for A Real Pain, where his charm and his chaos were the same instrument. Flip needs exactly that voice: a man absolutely certain he is mentor material, undone in real time by a creature made of the most shapeable substance on Earth. A ball of clay can become anything. Its teacher cannot become competent. The comedy writes itself, and so, quietly, does the emotion – because a story about a lump of unformed potential is a story about every kid who ever waited for a grown-up to show up properly.

An original, holding a holiday slot

Note where Disney has placed this film. November is the studio’s prestige animation window, the slot of Frozen and Moana, and Clay is taking it in 2028 not as a sequel but as an original – a deliberate statement in a slate this site has covered all week, from returning favorites like Lilo and Stitch 2 to the Frozen 3 wedding. Between the sequels, Disney is still willing to bet its best real estate on a brand-new idea with a funny, fragile premise.

Preview verdict: the easiest film on the 2028 calendar to root for. A terrible mentor, an irresistible student, a director with a feel for warmth, and a star whose voice was born for lovable failure. If Clay lands, it will not just be a hit. It will be proof that the oldest studio in animation can still surprise its own traditions – by lovingly firing the wisest character in the room.

Why this one matters beyond its slot

Original animated features carry a weight sequels never face: they have to invent affection from zero. Clay’s premise does that work in the pitch itself, because everyone has been Mushi – new, unformed, hoping the person assigned to guide them knows more than they do – and everyone past a certain age has been Flip, faking a competence the world assumed they had. That double identification is the same trick that powered Pixar’s originals into classics, and it travels across every age group Disney needs. Add Veerasunthorn’s visual warmth, visible even in the single piece of concept art the studio released – a round little figure in a green forest, built to be loved on sight – and Clay has the early shape of a film families adopt rather than merely attend. November 2028 is two years away, and this is already the title on Disney’s slate we would least like to wait for.

And let us say a word for Mushi, sight unseen. Disney has a long line of small, expressive companions who carry films on faces that barely move – and a ball of clay is the ultimate version of the idea, a character whose expressions are quite literally sculpted fresh in every scene. In the hands of Disney’s animators, that is not a limitation. It is a superpower. Expect the little lump to be on lunchboxes by Christmas 2028, and expect to cry at least once at a piece of clay learning what it can become. If that sentence sounds absurd, remember that this studio once made the world weep over a lamp, a snowman and a plastic fork.

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