Even with the quality (and now success) of Finding Dory, people had been worried about Pixar turning into a sequel factory. But you can rest easy: according to company president Jim Morris, plans are afoot for a lot of original films.
Talking with Entertainment Weekly, Morris explained that the studio's thinking on sequels is the same as any other filmmaking decision it and its brain trust, including John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and more, makes. “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 says. “A sequel in some regards is even harder than the original because you’ve got this defined world which, on the one hand, is a leg up, and on the other hand has expectations that you can’t disappoint on.”
So with the likes of Stanton, Docter, Brad Bird and others already engaged on other projects, there aren't going to be follow-ups to, say Up, Inside Out or another film set in Finding Nemo's world for a while. Bird is working on The Incredibles 2, set for 2019 and there are new Cars and Toy Story films before that, but once Mr. Incredible and his family have returned, the following years are almost completely original releases.
Still, the company does consider sequels when inspiration strikes. "Our plan had been to make an original every year and a sequel every other year, if the idea came forth to do it,” says Morris. “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. And a lot of that has to do with when Andrew had a sequel idea, and Brad had a sequel idea... Sometimes that’s just how it happens.”
Finding Dory arrives here on July 29. Next up for the company is Cars 3 on July 14 next year, then an original, Lee Unkrich's Day of the Dead pic Coco, due December 8.