'Toy Story 4' is bound to make competition reach for the sky
by Trevor Sheffield
I think we’ve reached a point in this summer’s blockbuster season where it seems like everything that was supposed to go right has completely backfired in some fashion. Whether it’s good movies disappointing financially (Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Booksmart), remakes failing to hold audiences critically (Aladdin (2019), Shaft (2019)), or franchise tentpoles dropping dead on arrival (Dark Phoenix, Men In Black: International, etc.), it’s undeniable that in this post-Endgame power vacuum, nobody’s really been able to pick things back up. This is especially tough for families out there, for whom the only option short of dragging their kids into Ma is the critically reviled next entry in the Secret Life of Pets franchise. Surely, at some point this summer, someone’s got to pick up the ball again...right?
Image from IMDb
Enter Toy Story 4 (released June 2019 and directed by Pixar veteran Josh Cooley), which was originally slated to be released in 2017, directed by Disney-Pixar CCO (and original Toy Story director) John Lasseter, and written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack.
That did not go as planned.
At first, the film was pushed back with Incredibles 2 taking up its original release date in 2018. Then, in November of 2017, news broke to the public that Jones and McCormack had left the project a year prior as a result of the company stifling the voices of “women and people of color,” per an IndieWire report. This ultimately led to a bombshell report by The Hollywood Reporter, detailing how Lasseter, the self-described “Peter Pan,” had a propensity for “grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes,” and more. Long story short, Lasseter got the boot from Disney and Pixar at the end of 2018, leaving Toy Story 4 in the hands of Cooley less than a year before the movie was slated to run.
So, after being delayed for over a year and possibly catalyzing this massive (and well-justified) shake-up, Toy Story 4 stands to have the longest development cycle in Pixar history. Given the situation at hand, one can only ask; does it live up to its predecessors?
Strange Things are happening
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