Back in July, I made the case for why Disney (DIS -0.55%) Pixar would do well to create a sequel to its 2004 smash hit, The Incredibles.

After all, The Incredibles was widely declared a box-office success, ultimately taking in over $631 million in gross ticket sales worldwide on a reasonable production budget of $92 million.

What's more, delighted audiences have long kept their eyes peeled for The Incredibles 2, especially since the first film seemed to end with a sequel in mind, as the movie's namesake superhero family readied a fight with a villain comically named "The Underminer."

Unsurprisingly, rumors swirled over the following weeks that Disney was potentially planning to unveil the sequel at its D23 Expo in August, but the event came and went with no Incredibles news.

This could be even bigger
Disney did, however, provide some new details at D23 on another upcoming animated superhero flick they've working on of late.

Incredibles fans, meet Marvel's Big Hero 6:


Marvel's Big Hero 6. Image source: Marvel.

Of course, that's just a comics file image from Marvel's extensive universe of more than 9,000 distinct characters, so when the actual film arrives, you can bet Disney Animation Studios will have worked its usual magic in bringing these characters to life.

What's more, Big Hero 6 will stand tall as Disney's first big-budget animated Marvel film since it acquired the comics company for $4 billion back in 2009.

As a result, and given the almost ludicrous success of Marvel's live-action films since then -- a list that includes Iron Man 2 in 2010, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, Marvel's The Avengers in 2012, and Iron Man 3 earlier this summer  -- it's safe to say Disney is willing to go big with Big Hero 6 to find similar success in the animated realm going forward.

So far, however, the company has only showed off some character outlines and a few tantalizing screen grabs from the film, including the following one showing the primary character in the film, robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada, riding on a blimp with his closest companion, a robot named Baymax.

Disney's Big Hero 6. Image source: d23.com 

So what's Big Hero 6 all about? 

In the comic books, at least, Hiro and Baymax are recruited by the Japanese government to be part of a highly capable crime fighting team, a plot Disney has so far indicated will largely remain intact as Hiro "finds himself in the grips of a criminal plot that threatens to destroy the fast-paced, high-tech city of San Fransokyo, [and so] joins forces with a reluctant team of first-time crime fighters on a mission to save their city."

The city, just as it sounds, is a curious combination of Tokyo and San Francisco. For those of you who can't picture exactly what that would entail, Disney also provided a short teaser clip of the movie's setting:

Sure, that was just a tiny peek at the project, but you can bet this is only just the beginning of Disney's coming marketing onslaught of Marvel-inspired animation awesomeness.

Big Hero 6 is slated to hit theaters on Nov. 7, 2014, which pits it against next year's Nov. 26 release of Home from DreamWorks Animation (DWA), a film adaptation of the popular 2007 children's book The True Meaning of Smekday. 

Considering that's about the same spacing Disney Pixar and DreamWorks decided to place between Monsters University and Turbo this summer -- both of which ended up performing relatively well after being released on June 21 and July 17, respectively -- Big Hero 6's competition for moviegoers' entertainment budget appears to be minimal at this point. 

But don't get me wrong: I would still absolutely love to see Disney make The Incredibles 2 a reality, even if it doesn't happen in the very near future. In the meantime, however, I can't think of anything better than a new animated Marvel movie like Big Hero 6 to fill that gap.