Disney and Seth Rogen apparently want to bring back Darkwing Duck — it just doesn’t want Jim Cummings, the man who originated the character.
Cummings, who originated the voice of Drake Mallard and his egomaniacal superhero alter ego in Disney’s beloved 1991 animated series, says he won’t play the character in the company’s long-developing revival with Seth Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures. More remarkably, Cummings claims he already recorded a pilot intended to test whether the property could successfully return.
“I did a pilot for it several years ago, to see the viability of it coming back, and everybody went nuts,” Cummings said at the premiere of Coyote vs. Acme, according to TheWrap’s report on the interview.
Then came the twist: “And they’re bringing it back, and they’re hiring somebody else to do Terry McGovern’s role of Launchpad, and they’re hiring somebody else to be Darkwing Duck. I hope they get … everything they deserve. Crazy, I don’t know what to tell you.”
It’s difficult to disagree with that final assessment. Crazy sounds about right.
Jim Cummings Is Not Merely an Actor Who Once Played Darkwing Duck
Voice actors can be replaced. No performer legally owns a corporate character, and animation history is filled with famous roles that have passed from one talented actor to another.
But treating Cummings as simply one interchangeable performer on a cast list misses what made the original Darkwing Duck work.
Darkwing was conceived as a ludicrous mixture of theatrical superhero, insecure father, relentless self-promoter, and genuinely courageous crimefighter. The character had to sound imposing and ridiculous at precisely the same time. Cummings could leap from a booming declaration about being “the terror that flaps in the night” to a wounded squawk of vanity without making Drake Mallard feel like two disconnected characters.
Jim Cummings in an interview – YouTube, WIRED
READ: Disney+ Announces ‘Toy Story 5’ Streaming Date
That performance was not decorative. It established Darkwing’s identity.
Cummings also helped shape the hero’s famous introductions. In a 2016 interview with ComiConverse, he recalled beginning to improvise the middle portions of Darkwing’s recurring “I am the terror” speeches only several episodes into the series. The improvisations became so dependable that, according to Cummings, writers eventually expected him to replace whatever had been placed on the page.
Disney’s own official page for the original series still lists Cummings at the head of the cast. The show ran for 91 episodes across three seasons, giving him decades to become inseparable from the character in the minds of its audience.
A new actor could certainly deliver a competent Darkwing Duck impression. That’s not the same thing as recreating the comic rhythm, personality, and accumulated audience connection Cummings brings to the role automatically.
The Recorded Pilot Makes the Recasting Even Stranger
The most confusing part of Cummings’ account is not simply that the production wants a new voice. It is that the project allegedly recorded him as Darkwing, received an enthusiastic response, and then decided to move forward without him.
If the pilot failed, a creative overhaul would at least be understandable. Cummings says the opposite happened: “everybody went nuts.”
His remarks also suggest that this wasn’t originally envisioned as an entirely disconnected reinterpretation featuring a dramatically different Darkwing. Only months ago, Cummings spoke as though he remained involved in a continuation built around older versions of the original characters.
Seth Rogen – The New York Times, YouTube
During a March 2026 interview, he said, “We’re all still alive and kicking,” described executive producer Seth Rogen as one of the project’s “prime movers,” and revealed that the team had “recorded basically one offshoot so far.” He also said Gosalyn was now grown up and added, “If it’s not broke, you don’t fix it.”
Apparently, someone decided to fix it anyway.
This Isn’t the Same as the DuckTales Recasting
Some may point out that another actor has already played Darkwing Duck in the modern era.
The 2017 DuckTales reboot cast Chris Diamantopoulos as a new Drake Mallard who eventually became that continuity’s real Darkwing. Cummings played Jim Starling, an aging actor who had portrayed Darkwing in an old television program within the show.
That casting worked because it was part of an explicitly different, highly self-aware interpretation. Disney’s own account of the DuckTales storyline explained that Darkwing initially existed as a show-within-a-show. Starling represented the old television hero, while the younger Drake inherited the identity and transformed it into something real.
Darkwing Duck in Duck Tales – Disney Animation, YouTube
READ: Jay Leno Took 50% Pay Cut to Keep Staff Employed on The Tonight Show
It was a deliberate generational story. The casting was part of the joke, the mythology, and the eventual tragedy of Jim Starling becoming Negaduck (which never paid off).
Cummings’ description of the present project sounds fundamentally different. A story about the original Darkwing returning after years away, with Gosalyn now an adult, would derive much of its appeal from continuity. The audience is being invited back because it remembers these characters.
If nostalgia and continuation are the sales pitch, removing the most recognizable element of the central character isn’t reinvention. It’s more akin to creative sabotage.
Terry McGovern’s Reported Absence Deepens the Problem
Cummings also said the production is hiring someone else to play Launchpad McQuack, replacing Terry McGovern.
Again, McGovern isn’t the only performer ever to voice Launchpad. Beck Bennett played the character in the 2017 DuckTales reboot, which was built from the ground up with a new cast and a new continuity.
But Cummings specifically invoked McGovern while discussing what had apparently begun as a return involving the original performers. Replacing both sides of the Darkwing-Launchpad partnership makes the project feel increasingly detached from the series it supposedly wants to revive.
Recasting becomes especially difficult to justify when the actors remain alive, active, capable of performing the roles, and interested in returning. This isn’t a production being forced to proceed without its original stars. According to Cummings, he already did the work.
Is Jim Cummings Being Pushed Aside by Disney?
Just days before Cummings revealed that someone else would voice the character, Disney once again declined to include him in its Disney Legends program—the company’s highest individual honor.
The 2026 Disney Legends class included fellow voice actor Alan Tudyk, along with Bob Iger, Dwayne Johnson, the Jonas Brothers, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anne Hathaway, Susan Egan, and others. Cummings, after more than four decades voicing Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Pete, Darkwing Duck, and an extraordinary collection of additional Disney characters, was left out again.
This time, he publicly acknowledged the omission. In an Instagram video filmed at D23, Cummings walked past signs promoting the Disney Legends ceremony while Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” played. His accompanying message read: “40+ years. 1500+ characters. The voice of generations. No comment.”
Jim Cummings Shares a post on Instagram blasting Disney for not making him a Disney Legend – Instagram, @jimjcummings
That pointed response came less than two weeks before Cummings’ Darkwing Duck recasting became widely reported. One unexplained omission might be dismissed as an awards committee’s peculiar judgment. Two developments in such rapid succession begin to look like a pattern.
The obvious question is whether Cummings’ perceived conservative politics have affected his standing inside Disney.
Cummings previously faced an online backlash after responding mockingly to a social-media post blasting Donald Trump. That exchange led some fans to identify him as conservative or pro-Trump, although the original incident didn’t establish the full extent of his political beliefs.
There’s currently no public evidence that Disney or Point Grey replaced Cummings because of his politics. Neither company has supplied an explanation for the casting decision, and Disney hasn’t said political considerations played any role in repeatedly leaving him out of its Legends program.
An X post about Jim Cummings, calling him a “hateful geriatric boomer” – X, @FreddyKrugasaur
That absence of evidence prevents the political theory from being reported as fact. It doesn’t, however, make the question unreasonable.
When a performer with Cummings’ résumé is passed over for Disney’s highest honor and then removed from one of his signature roles—despite having already recorded a reportedly successful pilot—people are naturally going to wonder whether something beyond ordinary creative judgment is happening behind the scenes.
Disney could end that speculation by explaining the decisions. Its silence only allows the questions to grow louder.
Disney Is Risking the Entire Reason People Want This Revival
The Darkwing Duck revival was first reported to be in early development in 2020, with Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, and Alex McAtee of Point Grey Pictures attached as executive producers. After years of uncertainty, Cummings’ remarks indicate that some version of the project is still alive.
That should be exciting. Instead, its first major recent development is alienating precisely the audience most likely to care.
Nobody has spent years waiting for a corporate asset bearing the Darkwing Duck trademark. Fans have been waiting for the character: the booming voice, the hilariously excessive speeches, the bruised ego, the relationship with Gosalyn, the friendship with Launchpad, and the manic energy that Cummings injected into every scene.
A screenshot of Jim Cummings from his podcast Toon’d In With Jim Cummings – YouTube, Toon’d In With Jim Cummings
If the creators intend to reinvent the entire concept for a new generation, they should say so and make the case for that vision. If this is a continuation of the original story, however, replacing Cummings after he recorded a reportedly successful pilot is nearly impossible to defend from the information currently available.
Cummings’ pointed hope that the production gets “everything they deserve” can be read as either a gracious wish or a perfectly delivered warning.
For a franchise built around a hero announcing his arrival with theatrical confidence, Disney’s revived Darkwing Duck is making a remarkably uncertain entrance.
Before it gets dangerous, it may want to explain what on Earth it’s doing.
How do you feel about Jim Cummings being replaced as Darkwing Duck? Sound off and let us know!
UP NEXT: ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ Tops Streaming Chart for July
