Recently, I’ve had some interesting emails pop up from the folks over at Disney for a movie about the Alaskan serum run. We all know parts of the story. You know, the one with the sled dog Balto heroically assisting in saving tons of lives from diphtheria. In recent months, we’ve covered the film The Great Alaskan Race, which told the story of another sled dog named Togo, who actually did most of the running that Balto took credit for (the glory hog). Now, we have another film that tells a similar story.

This movie comes from Disney and is called Togo. It stars Willem Dafoe, and it hits Disney+ on December 20 — so it’s the perfect stay-at-home film for viewers who just saw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and want to stay home.

RELATED – The Great Alaskan Race Interview: The True Heroes Behind The Iconic 1925 Serum Run

But what’s up with this coincidence with The Great Alaskan Race? Our own Nancy Tapia asked that very question at a roundtable.

“It is a coincidence,” producer Kim Zubick told reporters. “Once something’s in the zeitgeist…I mean, if you go back through the history of Hollywood movies, you’ll see that there were two volcano movies released within moments of each other. I actually don’t know much about that production, so I don’t know how long that was in gestation. I don’t know how that came up. We didn’t even know about that when we made this.”

Indeed, the twin film is a phenomenon as old as the medium itself. I’ll always remember seeing movies like Dante’s Peak around the same time as Volcano as well as Deep Impact around the same time as Armageddon. More recently we’ve had films like A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey, docs like Fyre Fraud and Fyre, as well as animated movies like Smallfoot and Abominable.

It’s just something random that happens, and often without filmmakers realizing until it’s too late.

Togo hits Disney+ this coming Friday!

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