There’s been a growing argument that Hollywood has largely abandoned the original story in favor of an endless parade of sequels, remakes, reboots, and adaptations. Even Pixar — once hailed as a prime example that original stories could still make big bucks — seems to have slid into the habit of pumping out ever more follow-up films as well.
There’s Finding Dory, the follow up to Finding Nemo that’s currently pulling in boatloads of cash. After that, only one of Pixar’s next four movies will be an original. Coco, a tale based on the Mexican Day of the Dead, is sandwiched between Cars 3, Toy Story 4, and The Incredibles 2. But that doesn’t mean Pixar is planning on cashing in with nothing but sequels.
“Everything after Toy Story and The Incredibles is an original right now,” Pixar president Jim Morris recently told Entertainment Weekly. The animation studio has two originals scheduled for March and June of 2020, and another two original penciled in after that.
And even with the sudden glut of Pixar sequels, Morris points out that the company is still making the same ratio of originals to sequels as they’d originally planned.
“Our plan had been to make an original every year and a sequel every other year, if the idea came forth to do it,” he said. “If we add the next films after the current ones, it actually comes out to exactly that: seven sequels in a spate of 21 originals, from the time we were acquired by Disney [in 2006].”
So rest assured, Pixar is still committed to bringing new and interesting stories to the cinema … just interspersed with occasional guaranteed blockbuster sequels. And let’s face it, we all have our own pet Pixar films we want to see more of. I’m sure there’s even people who are excited for Cars 3 … the monsters.
(via Entertainment Weekly)
