Jim Cummings is not returning as Darkwing Duck. The actor who originated the role in 1991 says Disney is recasting the lead of its long-developing revival, and that Launchpad McQuack is being recast as well.
Cummings shared the news on the red carpet for Coyote vs. Acme in an interview with Collider’s Aidan Kelley. He said he recorded a pilot for the project several years back to test whether the character could come back, that the reaction to it was enthusiastic, and that the show is now moving ahead with different voices in both roles. Terry McGovern, who voiced Launchpad in both DuckTales and the original Darkwing Duck, is also out.
Then came the part fans have been passing around since Friday night. “I hope they get…everything they deserve,” Cummings said, before adding that the whole thing was crazy and he did not know what else to tell anyone.
That is about as pointed as Cummings gets in public. Read one way, it is a blessing. Read the other way, it is not. He has spent the last year talking about this project as something personal to him, saying the character was near and dear to his heart and that he was honored to be bringing him back after 30 years.
Five Months Ago He Was Still In
The reversal is abrupt enough that it is worth laying the reporting side by side.
In August 2025 at San Diego Comic-Con, Cummings described the revival as a continuation rather than a reset, with an older Drake Mallard coming out of retirement and a grown-up Gosalyn. He compared the setup to an aging Batman returning to the job after years away.
In March 2026, on the Saturn Awards red carpet, he told ScreenRant that recording had started, though barely. He said they had “recorded basically one offshoot so far,” repeated the note about Gosalyn being older, and pointed to Seth Rogen as the person pushing the project forward.
Now he says the pilot he cut was several years ago and someone else is getting the part. Those two accounts of the same session, five months apart, do not sit comfortably together.
Disney Has Not Said Anything
Worth being clear about what is and is not established here. Cummings is the only source. Disney has not announced a recast, has not named replacement actors, and has not confirmed a release window, a platform, or a format for the series. The headlines currently framing this as Disney firing him are built on one red carpet answer.
The project itself has a six-year history of contradictory updates. Variety reported it in November 2020 with Rogen and Evan Goldberg producing through Point Grey Pictures and original creator Tad Stones attached as a creative consultant. A Disney television employee said it was canceled in 2022. Stones said in 2024 that it was still alive but that the writers’ room had been disbanded, and his reaction to hearing that was surprise there had been one at all. Reports that Cummings was returning surfaced in March 2025, though those traced back to social media rather than a Disney announcement.
This Is the Second Time
Cummings has been recast out of a signature Disney role before. Playdate with Winnie the Pooh replaced him as Pooh in 2023, reimagining the Hundred Acre Wood cast as children voiced by child actors, with Leon Chen taking over the bear. Fans were not happy about it then either.
The difference is that Playdate had an in-story reason, thin as it was. The Darkwing revival does not. The whole premise Cummings described is an older Darkwing, which is the one version of the character where his voice would have been the obvious fit.
He also has not been shut out of Disney generally. He kept voicing Pete in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse+ through 2026, returned as the Cheshire Cat for LEGO Disney Princess: Magical Mayhem, and played Darkwing again in Chibiverse as recently as 2025. This looks like one casting decision rather than a broken relationship.
Who Takes the Cape
Nobody has been reported for either part. The obvious name to raise is Chris Diamantopoulos, who voiced the new Drake Mallard in the 2017 DuckTales reboot. That show already staged a handoff in canon, with Cummings playing Jim Starling, the washed-up actor who once played Darkwing on television and who eventually turned on his replacement and became Negaduck.
Whether Cummings could still turn up as Negaduck is an open question, and one he did not raise himself. Collider floated it. He did not.
For now, Cummings can be heard as the Tasmanian Devil in Coyote vs. Acme, a role he has played since 1991, the same year Darkwing Duck premiered in syndication. The film opened in US theaters on August 28 after Warner Bros. shelved it in 2023 for a tax write-off and Ketchup Entertainment bought it for a reported $50 million.
Sources: Collider, Bleeding Cool, ScreenRant, Inside the Magic, MickeyBlog, Disney TV Animation News
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