Yesterday on Twitter, Incredibles 2 director Brad Bird teased the release of a new short film that will reveal what took place the night Edna Mode babysat Jack Jack.
Fans of the movie should remember about midway through the film, a weary Mr. Incredible handed Jack Jack off to an unassuming Edna Mode for a night off, only to find both characters in transformed spirits the morning after. So…what happened?
Go on…This New ‘Incredibles 2’ Short Film Is About Edna and Jack Jack
What does the success of Incredibles 2 mean for Pixar, Disney, and everyone else? Especially if they didn’t love the studio’s latest sequel?
From Jessica Rawden at Cinemablend:
Previously, that accolade went to Finding Dory, a movie that grossed a little bit over $486 million domestically and a little over a billion worldwide. Incredibles 2 has been a much bigger winner domestically, making more than $602 million in North America and another $562.5 million worldwide. It’s current total has it at $1,164,826,913 (via Box Office Mojo), which means it has topped the movie that just kept swimming to become Pixar’s highest grosser. It’s also notable because a few weeks ago, the sequel was already the first animated movie to gross over $500 million domestically, and now it’s north of $600 million.
As Rawden mentions, Frozen is still the highest grossing animated film of all time, but Incredibles 2 is hot on its heels, just recently surpassing Minions.
Now, box office only says so much about the quality of a film, but it does paint a compelling picture, one that at this point can’t be denied. In order for Pixar to maintain their high standards with original content, they made the controversial decision to bank on sequels over a decade back. We now see Finding Dory and Incredibles 2 to be among the most profitable films of all time, animated or otherwise, and on the horizon there’s Toy Story 4 and a slew of original stories essentially funded by this box office success.
Go on…Surprise, ‘Incredibles 2’ Is Pixar’s Biggest Box Office Hit Ever
From Will DiGravio at Film School Rejects:
If you’re reading this website, or live on this planet, I don’t need to explain to you why Pixar is worthy of its own video essay guide. In fact, I am probably doing Pixar and its body of work a disservice by lumping them all into one guide. All I will say is: Here are five video essays about Pixar you should watch.
Will’s list is wonderful (and his previous video essay guide for “your favorite cartoons” is also worth a look).
There’s a lot in these videos some of you super fans will no doubt have heard before, like how Pixar uses music to make us cry, or how the animation studio pays homage to classic films.
Go on…Some of the Best Pixar Video Essays You Can Watch Right Now
From Entertainment Weekly, which has a more dramatic headline – Incredibles 2 on track to be biggest animated movie of all time:
According to Fandango, Disney’s highly anticipated superhero family sequel is tracking to be the biggest animated movie ever in pre-sales.
The film is out-pacing the previous record holder, 2016’s Finding Dory, which went onto become the highest-grossing animated movie ever with $486 million in domestic sales (followed by Shrek 2 with $441 million, The Lion King with $422 million and Toy Story 3 with $415 million).
We don’t know for sure if this will translate to an equally strong opening weekend (Solo also had good pre-ticket sales), but this falls in line with my prediction that Incredibles 2 will be one of the biggest movies of the summer, probably just below Avengers: Infinity War in terms of worldwide box office, or perhaps Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. It also helps that this new Incredibles sequel is about as good as everyone is hoping (I saw it yesterday, and I expect most of you will be more than pleased).
Go on…‘Incredibles 2’ Is Beating ‘Finding Dory’ at Ticket Pre-Sales
Pixar’s Incredibles 2 premiered in Hollywood last night, which means the social media reactions are already rolling in. The embargo for Incredibles 2 doesn’t lift for most critics until Monday, and I won’t see the movie myself until tomorrow (Update: saw it, agree with a lot of stuff below), so if you can’t wait until then, here are the earliest (spoiler-free) takes.
Let’s start with the most positive:
Go on…‘Incredibles 2’ Just Premiered: Here Are The First Reactions
From RadioTimes:
It’s been a long wait, but Toy Story 4 is getting close. Well, closer: Although we originally expected the toys back in town last year, changes in personnel – most significantly with the departure of writers Rashida Jones and Will McCormack – saw Pixar rework the animation, pushing it back to a June 2019 release.
Part of me has always suspected that the movie was delayed in order to stagger Pixar’s next few movies coming out through 2019. At the moment, Toy Story 4 is the last officially announced Pixar movie with a release date and title. The rest are still under wraps, including “Untitled Suburban Fantasy,” but Pixar has confirmed that their next wave of releases will be original stories, not sequels.
Go on…Pixar Delayed ‘Toy Story 4’ Because They Threw Out Most Of The Script
Turns out that tip I reported was correct after all.
Allanah Faherty confirmed the rumor yesterday on Movie Pilot:
Pixar President, Jim Morris has revealed that after the release of the last sequel on the current slate, The Incredibles 2 in June 2019, the studio will release four original films.
“Everything after Toy Story and The Incredibles is an original right now,” he said. At the moment there are two untitled original films scheduled to be released in March and June 2020, and a further two are in early development, and look “highly likely” to join the studio’s schedule soon.
This is interesting news for a few big reasons. The most obvious one is that this addresses the “sequel-fatigue” many of us have been experiencing with the studio since Cars 2, as well as the doubts people have been having about Pixar’s quality in comparison to Walt Disney Animation Studios’ recent wave of huge success.
But the other big reason we should consider is how this will reflect on Pixar’s massive hit, Finding Dory, which is of course a sequel. The film has been a box office juggernaut in the U.S. (it will soon dethrone Captain America: Civil War as the biggest domestic hit of 2016), and the movie has also enjoyed steadily positive praise from critics.
In other words, this news implies what a lot of us have always suspected about Pixar as a business. Their decisions on which movies to release are not solely driven by short-term numbers and cash grabs. It seems they’re more interested in telling the stories they want to tell.
Note: the top image is a reference to Pixar’s next original film, Coco, which will release next year.