Hot on the heels of Hotel Transylvania 2‘s box office win this weekend (and a new record for Sony Pictures Animation at that), the man who steered the franchise since he was handed the director’s chair to the first film in 2011 is ready to hand over the reigns for the next installment.

During an interview with TheWrap, director Genndy Tartakovsky revealed he is officially done with the Hotel Transylvania franchise, stating his desire to pursue his other projects as the main reason for his exit:

“‘Hotel Transylvania 3’ is going to happen without me… Two is enough. I have a lot of other ideas, and I kind of have to express them and have them come out.”

Judging from those comments, it only stands to reason that his next project at Sony Animation will be the long-gestating (and long-anticipated) Genndy Tartakovsky’s Can You Imagine? (among others). It might be a while before we see it, however, since Sony Animation already dated its next three films: an untitled feature for September 23 2016, Get Smurfy for March 31, 2017, and The Lamb for December 8, 2017.

In the interview, Tartakovsky also offered his own reasons for the success behind Hotel Transylvania 2:

“Number one, it’s a family film, but also the timing was great, and really there was a lot of good will from the first one. People liked it, it was fun, and people didn’t take it too seriously. We live in a dark world and it’s a nice break from that — people wanted to laugh.”

He also discussed the slightly smaller budget for Hotel Transylvania 2 ($80 million compared to the first film’s $85 million):

“We were able to reuse all of our main cast and not rebuild them, so there was a big saving from resuming the old characters, although we had to upgrade them to a new computer system. We were pretty fast — we started the movie in 2013 and we delivered in 2015. That’s really short for an animated film. Usually it takes four years.”

Finally, he elaborated on his sudden decision to leave the director’s chair for Sony Animation’s Popeye film – a decision that caused Sony to put the film on indefinite hold:

“We made a version that we were happy with, and the studio didn’t like that version. It’s still a mystery for me that they didn’t like that version. They wanted to do ‘Popeye’ for the brand recognition and I loved the character and grew up with it, so there was a tug of war. They wanted it really updated, and I can only update it a little before it isn’t ‘Popeye’ anymore. To be truthful, it was in the middle of the Sony hack and the studio was really struggling. It was just really bad timing.”

Keep in mind that Hotel Transylvania isn’t an original creation from Tartakovsky. The first Hotel Transylvania already shuffled through five different directors before Tartakovsky came on to direct. Hotel Transylvania 3 (which is all but a given at this stage) will definitely need a new director (or directors) at some point, but, now that Tartakovsky and company have set a firm blueprint (both visually and narratively), the search for a new helmer shouldn’t be too hard (or at least not as hard as last time).

Hotel Transylvania 2 is now in theaters. Read Morgan’s review of the film here. Read Hannah’s discussion with the filmmakers here. Watch Mason’s interview with Genndy Tartakovsky here. Listen to (and watch) the Animation Addicts’ review and discussion of the first film here. Finally, the Addicts will also review and discuss Hotel Transylvania 2 on the next episode of the podcast, so stay tuned for that!

What do you think? Are you looking forward to Genndy Tartakovsky’s other projects at Sony? Who else could take over for Hotel Transylvania 3?

Edited by: Hannah Wilkes