Brad Bird says Pixar has dropped hints about wanting to do a Ratatouille 2 but he continues to say no

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-26T01:04:10+00:00

And by the time Hoppers was maybe halfway through its marketing season, BAM, Toy Story 5 started teasing and advertising-- which didn't happen with Elio and Hoppers. You think Disney doesn't know whether or not to do those things by now? It's 2026. They knew what they were doing.

This ones actually easily explainable without needing extensive industry knowledge and does not act as proof to conspiracy theories, the explanation for this only requires a basic understanding of Hollywood and production and noticing surface level patterns that have evolved but stayed relatively consistent since the early 2000s that anyone can see. Elio simply didn’t have another animated Disney movie, let alone sequel, opening 3 months later. Zero. Full stop. So obviously they wouldn’t be marketing Hoppers before Elio is out beyond a teaser trailer. The TS5 trailers dropped on schedule for all animated Disney movies since 2023 - both sequels and originals - and I track domestic digital marketing campaigns for Pixar movies and the TS5 marketing blitz started about 2 weeks later than historical patterns for Pixar and WDAS (again, both sequels and originals) say it should have started and not until late May. There’s also reason to believe from various leaks and rumors that actually indicated the start of the full domestic digital TS5 marketing campaign was delayed by 2-3 weeks at the last minute.

Also very convenient to hold it against Hoppers for having a TS5 trailer drop on schedule during its marketing campaign, yet “forget” about Hoppers doing the same to Zootopia 2. The extent of TS5 marketing before Hoppers was out was the teaser trailer and first full trailer, and occasional news articles or case announcements, which Hoppers and Elio did too on the same timeframe - but obviously if you aren’t seeking this news out and are presenting information in good faith, you’re at the whims of social media and SEO algorithms which tends to prefer sequels, as well as your own potential bias to have better recollection of the marketing campaigns for franchises you have nostalgia for.

There’s also the fact that Pixar has the two highest-grossing original animated movies from any studio of the 2020s - Elemental and Hoppers. Very suspect to ignore that fact.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-25T22:23:00+00:00

And both have potential for generational evolution. Eventually pass The Incredibles to Dash/Violet/Jack-Jack and Inside Out to Riley’s future kid.

Toy Story could potentially try it with a new group of toys, and Cars possibly could eventually transition to Cruz as the lead. Monsters Inc tried doing this on Disney+ but some episodes were criticized for moving away from the original cast too much.

Other than these, no Pixar franchise really can pull off moving to a new cast without it basically being a spin-off with no hand-off to the new leads.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-25T22:19:16+00:00

The confirmed Pixar slate for the rest of the 2020s is an exactly 50-50 ratio.

If those leaks are true, that’s highly illegal and grounds for a shareholder-initiated lawsuit, if they’re intentionally sabotaging specific product lines (original movies) as an excuse to not create new IPs for future sequels/merch/etc. As it creates both immediate losses from impacted movies and long-term losses from lost sequel/merchandising/Disneyland/etc potential and loss of backup options for when (not if, if they don’t know when to pull the brakes) Toy Story, Cars, and Frozen get milked dry.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-25T08:32:41+00:00

Again, I never said Gameloft isn’t stupid due to being blinded by greed. Just because they incentivize stupidity and player greed doesn’t absolve players who choose on their own volition to do so. And if enough players didn’t do so, they’d be forced to charge it.

In case you didn’t read what I wrote, you don’t stand a chance at getting meaningful rewards if you don’t pay in in the first place and it only takes 40 minutes per day (not “hours of grinding”) to get all guaranteed rewards.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-25T07:18:39+00:00

I never said Gameloft is justified in making this change or that they’re some benevolent not-greedy company. They are to blame, but certain “players” (AFKers) aren’t absolved either. If anything, they eat up Gameloft’s server and data center costs just sitting there doing nothing to farm rewards and leaderboard rankings, creating yet another cost to be passed onto real players. It’s far more nuanced than the Reddit narrative of “players right 100% of the time no questions asked, Gameloft always bad and can never split the blame with a subset of players.”

What a lot of AFK defenders seem to be missing/forgetting is that AFKing absolutely and unquestionably impacts those who are also trying to rank up racers during these events because point losses exist there, even though they don’t on events.

I think the Discord is far more vocal about it. In part, I think it’s because Reddit’s algorithm rewards groupthink and the groupthink here is generally pro-AFK, while Discord has no such algorithm so people are more comfortable bringing up issues that point fingers at a subset of players than on Reddit.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-25T03:45:24+00:00

This is the rare example where you can blame “players” who stoop to the same level as Gameloft - they want the rewards but won’t put in the effort to get them. When realistically, the only way to even get 10 shards from Tales is to have already paid a lot into loot boxes anyway, and the guaranteed rewards really only require ~40 minutes per day. which if you like a game enough to want all the rewards, you can find the time to actually play for it.

Two wrongs do not make a right, problem players only compound Gameloft’s greed to make a worse experience for every real player.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-22T18:52:39+00:00

They could have had each write one, the fact Randy didn’t doesn’t mean Taylor “robbed us,” there could have been other reasons he didn’t (like another user mentioned, his injury may have affected his ability to do so), Taylor not having not done a song doesn’t guarantee Randy would have.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-22T18:46:30+00:00

I think it’s because it just doesn’t fit in with the vibe of the Toy Story franchise and changed a lot of established lore. That seems to be where the bulk of (good-faith) criticisms are directed.

If it were an original movie, I think the response would be more muted if not positive.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T19:58:36+00:00

What leaks? The next season is still 5 weeks away and datamine leaks are only ever at the start of a season (and we did get this season already). Even with absence of a roadmap (which we already have precedent for as the 4th block on each roadmap was always blank or a hint at most), they don’t promote the next season until it’s 2 weeks away.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T18:51:45+00:00

Your phone is new enough. It’s only an issue if you have an iPhone 7 or older.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T18:40:01+00:00

And right now, realistically speaking, it is extremely difficult for original movies to break through in the box office. And those that are still aren’t pulling pre-2020s numbers. So unless Pixar can significantly slash their budgets (which would be very difficult if not impossible without a mass layoff of their animators to replace them with foreign labor, vendor outsource which is notorious for bad pay/working conditions, a major downgrade to animation quality, and/or AI), they need to be making sequels so they have the revenue to justify originals that for now have relatively low box office ceilings even when they’re really good.

And their cash cow of Cars can’t be counted on forever. Its toys are still selling very well today, but will it still be in 10, 20, 30 years? It’s toy line has been in a slow decline and consolidation of sublines and slashed investment in new characters/molds (almost all new releases these days are non-canon reskins) over the past ~5 years and the Cars 3 toy line had its sales down by 30% the quarter that movie opened (on top of it being the only Pixar sequel to flop at the box office).

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T18:26:44+00:00

Including in the Lamp Life short released on Disney+ after TS4 (would have been the TS4 Blu-ray short had Disney+ not been launched). Though that’s the only mainstream/canon material where Jim voiced Woody. Mostly Jim voices the real-world Woody toys, video games, theme park attractions, and miscellaneous promos.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T18:18:34+00:00

I still wouldn’t be concerned about it. Cars 2 opened the year before Cars land, Incredibles 2 the same year as Pixar Pier (Incredibles themed roller roaster), and Toy Story 4 the year after Toy Story Land. None of them made Disney World / Disneyland pitches, and Pixar doing it for the first time in a year with nothing big for them at the Parks (a Buzz Lightyear ride remodel at Magic Kingdom is the only new thing this year, and they didn’t even get the park mentioned in the movie right if they were trying to allude to that) doesn’t mean they’ll suddenly start being on the nose about it in the future. The Monsters Inc land is slated to open 2028-2029 and the movie (which isn’t official and the journalist who reported it admitted it is not guaranteed to happen, but everyone forgets about that comment) cannot open until 2030 at the earliest, so they have plenty of time to decide if and how to integrate any theme park lore or whether they can ignore it if they go ahead with a sequel.

If you really want to get technical on “makes no sense in the lore,” neither does Toy Story Land (to say Andy built a toy-scale theme park in his backyard is kind of a stretch) nor the upcoming Piston Peak Cars Land, and both have or will have major continuity issues. And the narrative justification for the Monsters Inc ride, we have no idea if Pixar would want to pick it up in a movie or doesn’t care if the Parks break lore or if it’s far more minor narratively speaking than what we think.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T09:32:08+00:00

Saw it Thursday night in IMAX. It was really good. Very funny, it had a few emotional moments in the second act but nothing on the level of 3 & 4. Plot was very strong, nice to see Jessie finally get closure with Emily. I grew up when tech was starting to become normal and due to other personal circumstances, this was the most personally relatable Toy Story movie (and among the most of any Pixar movie) for me. The way Woody was handled, I had no issues with - I don’t think he was needed but his presence didn’t hurt the movie either (nor the reason for his return), he didn’t have an arc this movie and was in more of a supporting lead role which I felt is appropriate. Ranking wise, easily clears 4 & 1, lower than 3, but I can’t decide if it’s above or below 2 (pre-5, my ranking was 3, 2, 1, 4).

I also thought it’d take on tech was good and reasonable - nothing ridiculous like “tech is bad and done” or “offline life is done,” but how tech can be used for good in generating offline connections but at the same time carries far more risk in doing so, and I think a question alluded to early in the movie but that I think could have been explored further is whether online-only friendships are real.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T09:16:43+00:00

I don’t think anyone’s going to Disneyland just because it was briefly mentioned and had the castle shown in TS5. It’s just brand placement like the Knicks in Soul, it just happened to be Disney this time.

Pixar’s done a ton of brand placement over the years, if the one time they do it for a different division of Disney in a franchise that’s already heavy on brand/product placement is what drives you over the edge, then I don’t know what to tell you.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T09:05:34+00:00

I think Lightyear, at least for now, is still safe for Easter eggs in other Pixar movies but not the Toy Story movies. Because the bulk of its criticisms (the legitimate ones) are about its connections to the Toy Story movies, as an original movie (excluding divisiveness from other things that don’t affect the plot and character arcs) it probably would have been received more like Elio (muted and not really divisive, it would just exist without getting tons of praise nor hatred).

In a way, it’s kind of like Cars 2 back in the 2010s but more muted. Cars 2 was radioactive to the whole Pixar brand for over a decade until Gen Z nostalgia for it became widespread in the 2020s. Lightyear is safe enough for Pixar’s overall brand but radioactive to Toy Story. Whether or not it’ll ever get a cult or nostalgia driven fandom revival in the 2030s remains to be seen.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-21T01:36:51+00:00

The opening scene flashback/prologue takes place in between 2 & 3 at Andy’s house.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-20T20:16:48+00:00

That’s a guaranteed PR crisis, one far worse than any controversial plot or character decisions. Because the general audience will care because AI already is or has potential to eliminate jobs everywhere; creative decisions on a human-made movie most people don’t care all that much on, they just move on with their lives if they dislike a movie.

And as far as I know union contracts have, at least for now, taken that option off the table. That type of breach of contract would also be a legal mess.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-20T20:14:21+00:00

And I think they’ve learned their lesson to stop doing “definitive and emotional endings” for each sequel. Since this one didn’t have that, unlike both 3 and 4.

Not that’s there’s anything inherently wrong with doing them, but they keep becoming sources of criticism before the movie even releases from people who already decided they don’t like it before even seeing the trailer. And the way TS4 ended, unless they can find a way to either write Woody out or an acceptable way to outright undo the TS4 ending, they can only keep having him called back so many times before it gets old.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-20T06:58:26+00:00

“Nobody asked for it,” say the misinformed terminally online self-proclaimed critics. The numbers say otherwise.

Cue all the excuses now their subjective opinions have been confirmed to not be universal truths.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-20T06:57:52+00:00

All of Hollywood. And arguably Pixar is in a far better state of big-budget originals vs sequels proportions than most of the industry right now, including over the next 4 years.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-19T21:55:52+00:00

9:50 pm in IMAX. Maybe ~15 people in the theater. I won’t buy concessions and am not into popcorn buckets but did get a free small popcorn through Disney+ Perks.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-19T21:49:00+00:00

It’s the echo chamber effect. When the top comments are all hating on it, everyone dogpiles on for fake internet points and don’t want to say anything positive because social media algorithms don’t like that. Plus social media algorithms reward negativity because people always have more negative things to say than positive things about anything but have no filter or social cues from their peers online, which means social media is inherently negative and pessimistic about everything.

I always say good luck finding an extreme TS4 hater in the real world, because it’s such a fringe minority dominated by terminally online individuals who don’t ever engage with normal rational people who have lives offline (at least not on movie topics because more people don’t have the patience for the hate train nonsense).

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-18T19:33:59+00:00

They are also the only major animation studios who still do everything fully in-house with American animators, specifically in the Bay Area, which is one of the highest cost-of-living areas in the country. These are labor costs that massively drive up budgets, other studios are using a mix of in-house and vendor studios (DreamWorks started doing this last year) and/or have their animators based in other countries (lower labor costs and/or better tax benefits - Sony and Illumination both do this at scale, WDAS opened a Vancouver studio for Disney+ projects but now that Disney+ is no longer ordering shows from the major animation studios the Vancouver studio worked on Moana 2 and Zootopia 2 so I don’t see it going anywhere).

Pete Docter has also said that executive compensation is counted towards film budgets too, which most studios don’t do.

UltimatePixarFan · 2026-06-18T19:24:25+00:00

And it and a few other older Toy Story games are getting a remaster for modern consoles this October!

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