The Walt Disney Company has reportedly poured $1 billion into Sora, OpenAI’s short-form video generation platform. If you’ve scrolled past TikTok ads featuring Bigfoot hawking random products, or seen AI clips of street cats strumming instruments on a stranger’s porch, chances are they were made with Sora—or a similar generative video tool. The process is simple: type a prompt, or even a full script, and the AI produces a video.

Figure 1. Disney Should Focus on the Sora That Truly Matters.

As part of the partnership, beginning sometime in early 2026, Sora users will be able to generate videos featuring more than 200 characters from Disney’s massive catalog, likely under strict creative guardrails. But that’s not what excites me. I don’t want to see Iron Man arm-wrestling the Mandalorian, or Moana and Mirabel belting out “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” while Baymax gently rocks Stitch in the background. Figure 1 shows Disney Should Focus on the Sora That Truly Matters.

Instead, I want Disney to make major investments in a different Sora: the protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts video game series. Theme Park rides, immersive 3D experiences, slot machines, movie cameos—above all, more video games. And if there’s any concern that 37-year-old Haley Joel Osment has aged out of voicing the character, there’s no need. He once told me he’d happily return to the franchise and genuinely enjoys talking about it.

So what makes Sora so special? He’s a lovable goofball with a heart of gold. He’s best friends with Goofy and Donald Duck. More importantly, he’s the emotional glue holding together the oftenbewildering Kingdom Hearts saga, which aggressively fuses Disney worlds and characters with the complexity and surrealism of Final Fantasy. In Kingdom Hearts, Darkness is a literal, malevolent force that corrupts hearts and takes the form of countless shadow creatures. Light, by contrast, doesn’t manifest the same way. There’s just Sora.

The games are also clear about one thing: of all the characters who wield Keyblades—magical, key-shaped weapons used to fight Darkness and lock or unlock pathways between worlds—Sora is far from the best. Yet his optimism, sincerity, bravery, and goofy warmth make him a secret weapon in a universe where the bonds between hearts are what generate the light and hope needed to hold the darkness back. In that sense, Sora embodies the highest ideals of a Disney hero.

Yes, the rights situation is complicated. Sora was created by Tetsuya Nomura, which means Square Enix owns the original Kingdom Hearts characters and the core IP, including Sora himself. Disney, meanwhile, licenses its characters and worlds to Square Enix for use in the games. But Disney has navigated similarly messy arrangements before. This doesn’t mean Disney should try to acquire Square Enix outright—rather, a targeted investment in one of the company’s development teams could be mutually beneficial.

Instead of pouring money into generative AI video tools, Disney should be investing in Sora and Kingdom Hearts. It’s been five years since the last mainline entry in the series, and in that time we’ve only seen the overly simplistic mobile prequel Dark Road and the rhythm-focused Melody of Memory. Kingdom Hearts IV is still in development, but likely won’t arrive until 2027. That leaves a sizable void—and Disney could help fill it. Earlier this year, Square Enix canceled the mobile title Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link, which was meant to bridge the gap between Kingdom Hearts III and IV. Disney could be the missing link instead.

Disney should loosen the reins on what the series can do, especially given the episodic nature of the core Kingdom Hearts games, where Sora pilots a whimsical spaceship made of blocks across the cosmos to reach new Disney worlds. The only thing keeping him from battling Thor with a Mjolnir Keyblade—or donning Jedi robes to wield a Lightsaber Keyblade—is Disney itself. Developers wouldn’t even need to build a massive game released all at once. Instead, they could roll out a steady stream of individual worlds, with smaller mini-games sprinkled in between. It’s a fresh, flexible approach that feels tailor-made for this series.

And if you’re still not convinced Sora is worth it, remember this: in Kingdom Hearts III, he had better chemistry with Rapunzel than Flynn Rider—the guy who canonically marries her in Tangled. Let that sink in.

Source: Polygon

Cite this article:

Priyadharshini S (2025), Disney Should Be Betting on One Sora—And There’s Only One That Matters, AnaTechMaz, pp.367