Bob Iger is back in charge of Disney and wasting no time restarting several of the company’s biggest and most lucrative franchises. During Disney’s earnings call, he revealed that the company has new sequels in the works from Toy Story and Frozen, as well as the first sequel from the popular Zootopia movie from 2016. This will be the fifth Toy Story and the third Frozen.
The most recent Toy Story opened in theaters in 2019. It earned over $1.07 billion worldwide. Frozen II premiered that same year; it made a whopping $1.45 billion in theaters. Zootopia was a similarly enormous smash, set in a world full of anthropomorphic animals. It earned $1.02 billion in theaters. While this will be the first sequel, the concept did recently get a spinoff series, entitled Zootopia+, on Disney+.
The Frozen and Zootopia series both seem tailor made to run forever, and those movies endings offer no impediments to future sequels. Toy Story 4, however, seemed like something of a definitive conclusion to the film, with Woody and Buzz actually splitting up, with Woody and Bo Peep choosing a life on the road helping “lost toys” reunite with new owners, while Buzz, Jessie and the rest of the old Toy Story crew choosing to stay with their current owner, Bonnie. Unless the sequel will focus on either Woody’s crew or Buzz’s group — something that would likely be met with some resistance from longtime fans — it’s going to be pretty complicated trying to figure out a way to combine the various characters again.
None of these films have announced release dates yet but animation takes time, so they are all several years away at minimum. Disney’s next animated release is Pixar’s Elemental, which premieres in theaters in June.
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