Now that the big Disney/Pixar thing has settled down in a comfortable merger, it’s time to get both companies back to making great movies. To do that, they’ve rehired Incredibles director Brad Bird.

The Hollywood Reporter says Bird will return to working with Pixar to direct the movie Ratatouille, a computer animated film about a mouse living in a Parisian restaurant. Bird is best known for his giant robot movie The Iron Giant and his superhero family flick The Incredibles, both of which are epic science fiction. That makes an animated mouse movie a bit of a departure for him. But Bird’s strength has always been finding the human element in his stories and his characters. Whether it’s a science fiction plot, or something more akin to Lady and the Tramp, he’ll find something special in it.

Bird’s involvement comes as something of a surprise, since it was thought that Ratatouille already had a director and that Brad Bird was busy working on a sequel to The Incredibles. If Bird is busy with Ratatouiille, does this mean Incredibles 2 is dead, done for, or just delayed? It’s likely we won’t find out until after June 29, 2007, when Ratatouille is scheduled for release.