INCREDIBLES 2 took 14 years to get to the big screen and the result was a big, fat hit that made $180 million this weekend. With that kind of money and fantastic reception you would think Pixar would already be planning another follow-up, and one that wouldn’t take 14 years to make. Director Brad Bird commented on the matter recently and gave the reliable, industry response of “you never say never.”
Bird and other members of the cast and crew were talking with EW about the prospect of future sequels or spinoffs in this world, which involved talking about the nature of scrapped ideas and potentially bringing them back later. Bird talks about how a lot of cool characters and stories never made it into the finished version of the sequel, and how such ideas could come into play in other movies.
We storyboarded, and we designed characters, and they’re really good! Some of them were really funny and cool and explored certain things. You know, you never say never, because there might be an opportunity to use it. Maybe the idea shows up in a different film. There was an idea I had for an animated version of The Spirit that I ended up using in The Iron Giant. You never know how these things are going to get repurposed. There were a lot of ideas that we had on this film that could be [used]… whether it’s another Incredibles film, or something else.
A lot of stuff didn't make it into INCREDIBLES 2 due to the fact the movie lost a year of production time when Pixar swapped the releases of TOY STORY 4 and INCREDIBLES 2, bumping up the latter's release. As a result, changes had to be made, and Bird talked about dealing with the hectic schedule.
It’s like the episode of I Love Lucy when she’s got the candies piling up on the conveyer belt. This film was like that. They took a year off our schedule, so if an idea didn’t work quickly, you had to just kill the darling and move onto the next. And I killed like a city full of darlings.
Of course, a new movie doesn't necessarily have to be a direct sequel. There was a world of superheroes that was established at the beginning of the first INCREDIBLES, and one that could very well be explored. Samuel L. Jackson voiced his idea for an INCREDIBLES 2 prequel, saying he would be interested in seeing how his character, Frozone, and Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) met.
That would be cool, to know why Lucius is this lovable uncle figure, and how long he and Bob have known each other and what kind of things did they get into? Did they meet because they were superheroes? Did they meet one night by accident? Or did they just meet naturally and come to find out, "Oh, you’re a hero, too!”
Given how long animation takes to complete, especially of this magnitude, it's hard to say when a new INCREDIBLES movie would come and what it would focus on. It would be at least several years, and it's hard to say if they would want to focus on some sort of prequel or continue the story of the Parr family. There don't seem to be any concrete plans now, but with that recent, record-breaking weekend opening I would think the ideas are starting to churn.
Go see INCREDIBLES 2 in theaters now!