So there I was, listening to The Walt Disney Company’s Q4 and fiscal year 2014 earnings conference call when amid all of the talk about numbers and “franchises” (which, I believe, is the favorite word among the senior business leaders at Disney), comes a surprise announcement from Disney CEO Bob Iger that Toy Story 4 is on its way from Pixar Animation Studios on June 16th, 2017 and that it will be directed by none other than John Lasseter himself. I immediately sent a text to our fearless editor-in-chief Marc Vibbert and then tried to sort it all out.
The Disney Insider blog quotes John Lasseter about the new project:
“We love these characters so much; they are like family to us. 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 [Stanton], Pete [Docter], Lee [Unkrich] 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.”
The script is being written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, who are both actors and writers. The duo wrote the screenplay for the 2012 indie comedy-drama Celeste and Jesse Forever (which I’ve just added and moved to position #1 in my Netflix DVD queue); Rashida Jones also starred in the film. I love Rashida Jones as Ann on the great NBC comedy Parks and Recreation. I’m not as familiar with Will McCormack’s acting work (although I’ve seen some of the shows that he’s been in). I am looking forward to watching Celeste and Jesse Forever to get a better feel for their writing.
Producer for the project is Pixar veteran Galyn Susman, who also produced the shorts Toy Story OF TERROR! and Toy Story that Time Forgot among many others.
While I don’t think we need another Toy Story movie given that Toy Story 3 was pretty much perfect in every way, I’m trying to take what John Lasseter said in his above quote to heart—that this new idea is a good one and worthy of a feature film (even if it smacks of just another “franchise” move).
Marc Vibbert also shared his thoughts about the project in a Facebook post this morning:
“#ToyStory4 – I have so many mixed feelings about this. I LOVE the ‘Toy Story’ trilogy and part 3 in my opinion is a perfect ending to the trilogy and a perfect film in its own right. (It got dusty in the room a few times.) The shorts and specials that have been released are also fantastic and nice epilogues to the toys/characters we’ve grown to love over the past 19 years. I wholly trust [John] Lasseter, [Andrew] Stanton, [Pete] Docter, and [Lee] Unkrich — but I’m still not sure ‘Toy Story 4’ is a film we actually need. I guess we’ll find out June 16, 2017.”
Stay tuned to Animation Fascination for the latest news and commentary about Pixar’s Toy Story 4 (not to mention the new Toy Story holiday special Toy Story That Time Forgot which debuts on ABC on December 2nd, 2014).
Source: Disney Insider
Animation Fascination 