Walt Disney Studios and Pixar announced today that the release dates for the upcoming The Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 are having a bit of a shuffle. In fact, they’re swapping dates. The Incredibles 2 will now arrive in theaters on June 15, 2018, with Toy Story 4 debuting on June 21, 2019.
Director Brad Bird will return for The Incredibles 2 as writer and director. Though story details are under wraps, he has hinted that some of the elements in the script are connected to ideas that didn’t make it into the original film.
“I had a bunch of ideas that I wanted to put in ‘The Incredibles,'” he said, “but they just didn’t fit. Certain ideas fit, but other things make you go, ‘This is great, but I’d have to give up two other things that matter more to me to get this other thing in.’ So there were a pile of ideas left over from ‘The Incredibles,’ but it’s not a big thing. There were little scenes and things that I was interested in. I wanted to come up with sort of an over-arching idea that connected to the first film that went somewhere different. That’s the one that took a little more time.”
John Lasseter, director of the original Toy Story and Toy Story 2, will direct Toy Story 4, which opens a new chapter in the lives of Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the Toy Story gang. The story was dreamt up by Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter and Lee Unkrich, the storytellers who have been the driving force behind all three Toy Story films. The film is written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack.
“We love these characters so much; they are like family to us,” said Lasseter. “We don’t want to do anything with them unless it lives up to or surpasses what’s gone before. Toy Story 3 ended Woody and Buzz’s story with Andy so perfectly that for a long time, we never even talked about doing another Toy Story movie. But when Andrew, Pete, Lee and I came up with this new idea, I just could not stop thinking about it. It was so exciting to me, I knew we had to make this movie—and I wanted to direct it myself.”
