Pixar’s Many Upcoming Sequels! Inspired Ideas or Cash Grabs?

Pixar’s Many Upcoming Sequels! Inspired Ideas or Cash Grabs?

A couple days back it was announced that Coco 2 is in the works for a 2029 release date (that year doesn’t even sound real). This is the third sequel that Pixar has announced within the last year. It raises the question: are these sequels cash grabs or inspired ideas? Let’s talk about it! 

My Thoughts: The only announced Pixar films are sequels. Toy Story 5, Incredibles 3, and Coco 2 will release between 2026 and 2029. All of them are sequels to some of their hit films, some are viewed as necessary while others are viewed as unnecessary. A big topic of conversation surrounding Pixar and the movie industry in general is talking about there being too many sequels and Hollywood being out of ideas. Pixar releasing three sequels instead of original ideas is something people are noticing and are frustrated by. That’s sort of the starting idea for the rest of the blog post, is Pixar releasing too many sequels? 

Is Pixar Releasing Too Many Sequels? 

• It’s a bit of a complicated question to answer, because yes I do think Pixar is releasing too many sequels. It’s hard that Pixar is doing this because for years they were the kings of releasing great original ideas. You describe a movie about a rat teaching a guy how to cook by pulling his hair or an old man travels to Niagara Falls by balloons and his house and they sound weird. Those ideas shouldn’t work but Pixar worked their magic and created great movies. That’s what was so exciting about Pixar from 1995 to 2010, from Toy Story to Toy Story 3. You had sequels in there but you had very original and clever ideas that made consistently great movies for years. Around 2010 they started doing a lot more sequels and prequels. You had some original ideas in Brave, Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, and Coco but you also had Toy Story 3, Cars 2, Monsters University, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4. All of those sequels did great numbers. Toy Story 3, Finding Dory, Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4 all made $1 billion. To this day, Incredibles 2 has the biggest opening weekend for an animated movie. Pixar's sequel problem started 15 years ago when Toy Story 3 came out. It’s not that all of their sequels and prequels have been bad. Several of them have been quite good and some of the best of the years they came out. 

• But what’s changed from 2010 to 2025 is that original ideas don’t sell tickets like they used to. Several of Disney and Pixar’s movies this decade have been original ideas. Soul, Encanto, Turning Red, Strange World, Elemental, and Wish. Some of those went straight to streaming so you can’t measure how well those movies did. But Encanto, Strange World, and Wish all released in theaters and none of them did great. Encanto became a hit on streaming and it was pre-No Way Home so the box office wasn’t great. If you just look at Strange World and Wish, their combined budgets was $345 million. Their combined box office was $329 million. Both of them were some of the biggest box office bombs of the year. In 2023, Pixar released Elemental that had a bad opening weekend but ended up having a good leg. It wasn’t 100% profitable, but it made money back with almost $500 million at the box office. In response to multiple box office bombs Disney decided to convert a Moana tv show into Moana 2. They knew that the movie would make a lot of money and would be a huge hit for them. They were correct that it made over $1 billion at the box office, they got a lot of money back. The highest grossing movie of last year, Inside Out 2 made $1.7 billion. It became the highest grossing animated movie of all time and dominated the box office. Disney looked at the bad box office numbers for Strange World and Wish and went “ok, audiences don’t show up for original ideas”. They look at the box office numbers for Inside Out 2 and Moana 2 and go “they love sequels, let’s do more”. The idea for Coco 2 probably came about because of the success of last year’s animated sequels.  

• Whenever people ask “why does Hollywood keep making sequels.”. The answer is simple, the audiences vote with their dollars. We’re the problem, not Hollywood. Most audiences will only show for sequels and properties they know. Why did Pixar announce Toy Story 5, Incredibles 3, and Coco 2 because audiences are more likely to show up for them. Had Elemental done better at the box office and made $700 million then maybe Pixar would learn to make more original ideas. In a couple of months we’re getting a new Pixar movie, Elio. Right now there’s not much talk and buzz surrounding that movie, probably because it’s an original idea. If that movie is another disappointment and makes less than $500 million, we won’t get a bunch of original ideas in the future. If it makes $700-$800 million, then we could get more original ideas. Go out and support original ideas if you want more original ideas. It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science.