Collider recently caught up with the acclaimed director Brad Bird to discuss the release of The Iron Giant: Signature Edition, and in the process learned a few interesting details about his next project: the hotly anticipated The Incredibles 2. He began by giving an update on the sequel's script.
"I have the story arc. I’m probably three-quarters through the script, first pass through the script, but we’re already boarding parts of it. I’ve got a lot of people that worked on the first one working on it, so we’re all having a good time with it."
While The Incredibles 2 doesn't have an official release date yet, Bird revealed that it has (thankfully) been bumped ahead of fellow sequel, Cars 3 in the Pixar pecking order:
"In terms of the release date, we were originally—Incredibles [2] was supposed to happen after Cars [3], and our wheels just happened to click a little earlier so they moved us up. Release dates are a little fluid when you’re making films so far in advance. Some films are tougher to come together and tough nuts to crack, and other ones comes together a little more quickly, and so I’m just going to work as fast as I can work well with a relatively small team because I like small teams better until you’ve got everything firmly figured out."
The Tomorrowland and Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol director naturally remained very tight-lipped about any notable plot details. However, he did remark on the fact that the superhero movie genre looks a lot more crowded over a decade on from the original movie's release, back in 2004:
"What’s changed is there were only two other superhero franchises at the time Incredibles came out. One of them was X-Men and the other was Spider-Man, and now there are 400 billion of them and there’s a new superhero movie every two weeks. What you don’t want to do is trot over the same turf in the same way everyone else is. So we’re trying to keep it focused in the area that our film was, which was a little bit more about characters and relationships and stuff like that, and see where that takes us. But we’re having a good time."
Excited by Bird's comments? Or were you against the idea of a sequel to The Incredibles in the first place? As always, be sure to sound off with your thoughts in the comments below!