Across Walt Disney Studios’ nearly 100-year history of being in the animation industry, the company has continued to build and expand on numerous beloved worlds through its imaginative movies. And looking forward, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger has announced that the House of Mouse is currently working on three new sequels to some of its most beloved properties including Frozen and Toy Story.
Iger made the announcement during the company’s quarterly earnings call, which CinemaBlend was listening in on. And along with the company’s biggest franchises, Disney Animation’s Frozen and Pixar’s Toy Story set to receive sequels, Zootopia is also set to get a sequel following the success of 2016’s original film.
Bob Iger’s exciting news was a bright spot that unfortunately came with word that The Walt Disney Company would also be laying off 7,000 jobs in an effort to save $5.5 billion in costs. Also part of the good news from the Disney CEO was the announcement that Disneyland will be getting a new Avatar experience.
First off, it’s not exactly a surprise that Frozen would receive a third movie following the franchise being such a global phenomenon since Elsa since uttered “Let It Go.” The 2019 sequel earned $1.45 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming the top-grossing animated movie of all time, per Variety. The cast has also shared their interest in reprising their regal characters, including Elsa voice actress, Idina Menzel, in the past.
However, when it comes to more Toy Story, technically the franchise has had a send off for Woody and Buzz twice already. Though at this point in time, we have no idea whether Tom Hanks and Tim Allen would be back for the sequel. The franchise has a ton of characters and could even explore another corner of the toy box they’ve introduced before, but for the moment, all we can do is speculate.
Last year, Pixar released a Toy Story spinoff with Lightyear and made the controversial decision to cast Chris Evans as the space cadet to go with the unique story the movie told. However, Lightyear wasn’t nearly as successful as the last Toy Story movie, grossing $226 million worldwide in contrast to 2019’s Toy Story 4 making over $1 billion. Perhaps, Disney realized its spinoff experiment wasn’t as lucrative as forwarding the core Toy Story franchise itself.
Zootopia was another over-$1 billion box office hit for Walt Disney when it came out back in 2016 to great reviews and later scored the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar, as the original Frozen and Toy Story 3 previously won. The buddy cop comedy that imagines a world where wild animals live in mankind’s society certainly left things open-ended for Jason Bateman’s Nick Wilde and Ginnifer Goodwin’s Judy Hopps to solve more cases together.
The announcement of these sequels comes over three years since the last Disney animated sequel with Frozen II. The studio has delivered numerous original films as of late, like Soul, Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, Encanto and Turning Red. This trend will continue with Pixar’s next movie, Elemental, coming to theaters on June 16, along with this fall’s Disney Animation release, Wish and next spring’s Pixar movie, Elio. Check out what other upcoming Disney movies you can look forward to here on CinemaBlend.
