It was revealed last weekend during the Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios: The Upcoming Films presentation at this year’s D23 Expo that Monsters University director Dan Scanlon will direct Pixar’s next original film—after Coco, that is—set in a suburban fantasy world. The film has not been given a release date, but the studio has the following dates staked out for untitled, upcoming films: March 13, 2020, June 19, 2020, and June 18, 2021.
It’s expected that The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You into a Suburban Fantasy World will take one of those three dates, and it appears that another original film, with Cars 3 director Brian Fee at the helm, may very well take another!
Fee, like Scanlon, worked on a number of films at Pixar before going on to make his directorial debut. He worked as a storyboard artist on Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Cars 2 and as a story artist on Monsters University. The similarities between Fee and Scanlon’s career paths go even further than their time at Pixar—they, like Mike and Sulley in Monsters University, went to college together! Fee and Scanlon both studied at the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio, where they were also roommates. (Name a more iconic duo. I’ll wait.)
Fee is currently taking a well-deserved break coming off of Cars 3, which he says took six years to make from start to finish, but he confirmed in an interview on the Empire podcast that not only does he plan on continuing to work with Pixar, but he’s actually directing another movie for the studio! We don’t know what exactly the film will be just yet, but Fee did say that it will be an original film rather than another installment in an existing franchise like Cars or Monsters, Inc.
I don’t know about you, but knowing that there are at least two original films in the works at Pixar, especially from filmmakers as talented as Brian Fee and Dan Scanlon, is enough to make me excited for what’s to come. Until then, we still have Coco coming later this year, the long-awaited The Incredibles 2 in 2018, and Toy Story 4 in 2019. As for what other Pixar movies could come our way over the next few years, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were plans for another Monsters, Inc. film or even an Inside Out 2.
There’s no denying that Pixar can make and has made excellent sequels, whether you’re talking about Toy Story 3 or Finding Dory, but I think everyone can agree that brilliant, original films are the staple of Pixar and are what makes the studio so great, so it’s encouraging to know that there will be no shortage of original content from Pixar going forward and that we have every reason to have hope for what the studio has planned for infinity and beyond.
What do you think, Rotoscopers? Are you excited to see more original movies from Pixar? What sequels, if any, do you still want to see? Sound off in the comments!
Edited by: Kelly Conley
