Disney has announced Disney Cursed Love, a new romantasy series that will reimagine some of the studio’s most iconic love stories through darker tales of magic, curses and romance. The project marks an intriguing shift for a company whose fairy tales have traditionally balanced danger and heartbreak with a family-friendly sense of wonder.

Disney has never been short on complicated romances, from enchanted kingdoms to characters forced to choose between love and duty. Cursed Love appears ready to take those familiar ingredients and push them into a genre that thrives on higher stakes, darker fantasy and more intense romantic conflicts.

And Disney is starting that experiment with a story that already has everything a dark romantasy needs: a curse, an enchanted world and a love story that refuses to stay simple.

The first entry in Disney Cursed Love will be The Curse of a Forsaken Heart, bringing Belle and the Beast into a new fantasy adventure written by bestselling author Emily McIntire and illustrated by artist Samairu. Rather than simply retelling Beauty and the Beast, the story uses Disney’s familiar characters as a gateway into an entirely new romantic conflict.

The story begins when Belle and the Beast, still in his human form, are pulled through an enchanted stained-glass window into a mysterious magical realm. They soon discover that the kingdom is cursed after its princess, Emberlynne, rejected a powerful sorcerer’s marriage proposal, leaving the realm without love and cursing anyone who enters.

Their journey therefore becomes bigger than finding their way home. As announced by Disney Publishing in Anaheim at D23, and reported by Variety, Belle and the Beast must help Emberlynne find a love of her own and break the curse, while also protecting the relationship that brought them into the strange kingdom in the first place.

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But the real romance at the heart of McIntire’s story belongs to two characters Disney fans have never met before, setting up the darker love story that Cursed Love is really interested in exploring.

While Belle and the Beast remain central to The Curse of a Forsaken Heart, the story ultimately shifts toward Emberlynne and Lucan, two original characters whose relationship becomes its emotional core. Their dynamic leans into the rivals-to-lovers formula, with Emberlynne resisting Lucan even as his flirtation complicates their connection.

That approach fits McIntire’s fascination with reimagining familiar stories through darker romantic lenses. For her, Beauty and the Beast has always been about transformation and recognizing that people remain worthy of love despite their flaws.

The story will debut as a webcomic on Webtoon before expanding into print in 2027, extending Disney’s growing partnership with the platform, which has already brought more than 20 Disney comics to readers, including stories from Star Wars, Disney Villains and Gravity Falls. With audiences already buzzing over Disney’s upcoming live-action Tangled, Cursed Love gives the studio another way to revisit its classic romances and test whether they can find a second life through modern romantasy.

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Disney has spent decades defining fairy-tale romance for younger audiences, but could its darker Cursed Love experiment give those stories a new life for adult readers? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!