How quickly times change. There once was an era when Pixar didn’t think it needed sequels and could just go from original story to original story. In fact, in 2016, Pixar’s president Jim Morris said there were no Pixar sequel plans after Brad Bird’s “The Incredibles 2,” something of a response to the underwhelming reception to “Cars 2” and, to a lesser degree, “Toy Story 3.”
“Most studios jump on doing a sequel as soon as they have a successful film, but our business model is a filmmaker model, and we don’t make a sequel unless the director of the original film has an idea that they like and are willing to go forward on,” Morris said at the time.
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While Pixar has undoubtedly tried to stick to that—six of the ten movies they’ve released since the summer of 2016 have been original— since Morris’ remarks, they’ve released “Toy Story 4” (even when they said ‘3’ was the finale), the spin-off “Lightyear,” and this summer’s upcoming “Inside Out 2.”
A “Toy Story 5” is in the works, and now a new report from Bloomberg— discussing many of Pixar’s recent layoffs and woes— says not only are sequels still game, but Pixar is considering rebooting some of its classic films.
According to the Bloomberg piece, “Every hit of yesteryear is being considered for a reboot, with ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘The Incredibles’ regarded as particularly strong candidates for new titles.”
Pixar’s new strategy to turn around their financial problems” involves balancing original movie ideas with sequels and spin-offs, the better to remind audiences what they once loved about Pixar.”
The new aim is apparently to make three new movies every two years, which is historically much less frequent than their usual, one film a year cadence, “with every other title a sequel or spin-offs the rest standalone concepts or potential seeds for new franchises.”
This plan also sounds very similar to Bob Iger and Disney’s less-is-more approach and the dialing back of output at Marvel and Lucasfilm.
On May 21, Pixar announced the company’s largest restructuring, cutting 175 jobs as the studio refocuses on big-screen films instead of Disney+ projects—also not dissimilar to how Marvel and Lucasfilm are heading back to the big screen with an emphasis on Disney+ programming.
Unfortunately, it’s a sign of the times, and financially, they are not great at the moment, a trend affecting the entire industry. Will they follow through? This industry is fickle, so we shall see, but if the box office of 2024 is any indication, these alarming trends may continue to dominate for the foreseeable future.
