On Tuesday, Variety announced that Disney+’s The Mighty Ducks follow-up series, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, will be receiving a second season at the streamer. Following the events of the original film trilogy, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers sees a new team of scrappy underdog youth hockey players challenge the Ducks for supremacy with the begrudging help of Emilio Estevez’s (The Breakfast Club, Bobby) Gordon Bombay.
Premiering in March, the family-friendly sports series did well for Disney+, landing an 89% Certified Fresh score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Though the precise streaming numbers for The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers have not been released, the news of the series renewal comes less than six months after the series’ debut.
Alongside Estevez, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers stars Brady Noon (Good Boys. Boardwalk Empire), Dylan Playfair (Letterkenny, Descendants 2), Julee Cerda (Blindspot, Passengers), Maxwell Simkims (Bizaardvark, The Chicken Squad), Swayam Bhatia (Succession, The Quaran-Teen(s)), newcomer Luke Islam, Bella Higginbothan (Troop Zero), Kiefer O’Reilly (Home Before Dark), Taegen Burns (Dumplin’, The Right Stuff), De’Jon Watts (The House with a Clock in Its Wall) and Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls), who likewise serves as an executive producer on the series. According to The Hollywood Reporter, co-creator Steven Brill (Adam Sandler: 100% Fresh, Little Nicky), screenwriter behind The Mighty Ducks original film trilogy, pitched the continuation to Disney+ before the platform even had a name.
While John Stamos’ (Full House, Grandfathered) Big Shot later joined The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers on Disney+ as a scripted series focusing on youth sports, the Ducks had a built-in fanbase from the film series. The Hollywood Reporter cites how The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers plays into Disney+’s marketing strategy of “[leaning] into its parent company’s deep roster of [recognizable] IP.”
Brill plans to further expand on the nostalgia in season two, which will begin production in 2022. According to TVLine, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers executive producer and co-creator plans to bring back in Joshua Jackson’s (Dawson’s Creek, The Affair) Charlie Conway and Kenan Thompson’s (Saturday Night Live, Kenan) Russ Tyler in the show’s second season.
As Disney+ just announced the season two renewal this week and production won’t begin on the series until next year, a late 2022 release is likely the earliest fans could expect to get their hands on season two of The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers.
With COVID-19 still disrupting production schedules on many television projects, studios, such as Netflix, have considered putting vaccination mandate in place to protect casts and crews. As Disney has already implemented a similar policy for theme park employees, it’s possible that they’ll follow suit at Disney+ as well, via The Hollywood Reporter. COVID-19 production delays last year forced Graham to leave Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist early to fulfill her dual role as performer and executive producer on The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers.