After working for Walt Disney Co. for decades, Woody, Buzz Lightyear and their “Toy Story” friends have been given new jobs by the large entertainment conglomerate.
As announced today in a press release, the October 1 game between the Atlanta Flacons and the Jacksonville Jaguars will be streamed on both ESPN+ and Disney+, with the Disney version being a fully animated live-ish recreation of the game set in the Toy Story universe.
Using “state-of-the-art tracking technology,” everything that happens in the game will be recreated—with a short delay—in animated form, while Toy Story characters watch from the sidelines and kid-friendly announcers explain what’s going on. There will even be a halftime show stunt from Duke Caboom, the motorcycle guy that Keanu Reeves voiced in Toy Story 4.
This all sounds surprisingly interesting, if it all works out… though maybe it’ll be more interesting if it doesn’t work out and the players just start sliding down the field in T-poses. Of course, if this were about anything other than professional sports, we would almost definitely be horrified by this.
After all, what is this but the football equivalent of the first steps toward replacing people with AI? If the Toy Story version of the game is a hit, then why not cut out the expensive human athletes and just start broadcasting cartoon games based on nothing but stats?
This is the future the greedy CEOs of the world want!