Pixar Plans to Focus More On Original Films and Less On Sequels

Few companies can compete with Pixar when it comes to producing heartfelt family movies with stunning visual effects. However ,in recent years with the release of two Toy Story sequels, Cars 2, Monsters University, and Finding Dory on the horizon, Pixar has strayed from original story telling and fallen into the familiar trap that accompanies milking a franchise through the production of sequels. Pixar's last original production, Brave, also failed to meet many movie goers' expectations with previous films like Up to live up to. Pixar president Ed Catmull, seems to recognize that the frequent complaint of emphasis on sequels to past successes have lead Pixar into producing less than Pixar quality films, movies that have all our favorite characters in beautiful CGI, but lacking the heart of the original stories we all grew up watching. As a result, Pixar will work primarily on developing original features and limit sequels to releases every 2 years.

It could be argued that when a company produces a sequel to a film, it often can reduce the emotional impact of the story on the audience. With Cars, the audience enjoyed the story of a brash race car coming of age in small town that had been forgotten as the result of the construction of the interstate years earlier. The sequel featured the goofy but lovable best friend becoming a spy and blowing up bad guys. Now of course, Toy Story 2 and 3 were excellent films and I would be lying if I said I did not tear up at the ending to the third film. I like many in the audience was approximately the same age as Andy and could relate with the passing of childhood and putting away of childish things so to speak. These films however were an exception to a well established rule tested frequently by Hollywood. On the subject of original films vs sequels, President Catmull stated, “For artistic reasons … it’s really important that we do an original film a year". "Every once in a while, we get a film where we want or people want to see something continuing in that world — which is the rationale behind the sequel. They want those characters, which means we were successful with them. But if you keep doing that, then you aren’t doing original films.” Catmull added, "We’re going to have an original film every year, then every other year have a sequel to something”. “That’s the rough idea.”

The release schedule for upcoming films include:
The Good Dinosaur – May 30, 2014
Inside Out – June 19, 2015
Finding Dory – November 25, 2015
Untitled Pixar Film about Dia de los Muertos – June 17, 2016
Untitled Pixar Film – June 16, 2017
Untitled Pixar Film – November 22, 2017
Untitled Pixar Film – June 15, 2018