The titles for Pixar’s upcoming films have a lot of numerals in them. There’s Cars 3, The Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4. And, despite the studio’s fairly good track record for making sequels that don’t feel creatively bankrupt, that’s a disheartening lineup. Whither the imagination we had come to expect from the people that brought us a Hello, Dolly!-loving robot? But, take heart, because Pixar president Jim Morris recently told Entertainment Weekly that the follow-ups are coming to an end. “Everything after Toy Story and The Incredibles is an original right now,” Morris said. There two untitled films scheduled for 2020, and another two in what EW calls “early development.” Those, Morris explained, are “highly likely” to happen.
Morris also argued that Pixar did not renege on any promises. “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 it’s penciled out to be the same portfolio, just not in the order we thought they would be.”
For the sequel-averse, the lone bright spot in Pixar’s pre-2020 slate is Coco, due out in November 2017 from Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich.