Pixar Sequels 'Cars 3', 'Toy Story 4' & 'Incredibles 2' Last Batch Before Original Films

While audiences are still bawling in theaters at the return of the most beloved Blue Tang fish in Finding Dory, Pixar is trying to keep away from sequels in the midterm future: Cars 3, Toy Story 4 and The Incredibles II already have scheduled release dates, however the award-winning animation studio will be focusing on original films from then on.

Jim Morris, the current president of Pixar Animation Studios, spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the company's future films and whether recent classics like Ratatouille and Wall-E would be getting sequels -- but aside the already planned ones, fans will have to wait for quite a while for other favorite characters to return.

"Most studios jump on doing a sequel as soon as they have a successful film, but our business model is a filmmaker model, and we don't make a sequel unless the director of the original film has an idea that they like and are willing to go forward on," the exec told the outlet. "A sequel in some regards is even harder [than the original] because you've got this defined world which, on the one hand, is a leg up, and on the other hand has expectations that you can't disappoint on."

Considering how many films Pixar has made, the amount of sequels is actually pretty small: So far three Toy Story movies (with one coming up in 2018), a Cars sequel (and another one on the way on 2017), the Monsters, Inc. prequel Monsters University, the currently in theaters Finding Dory and the upcoming The Incredibles 2, set for a 2019 release. Also, except for the first two Toy Story films, many years passed between the original films and their sequels, as the studio usually focused on other, original projects.

Right now, Pixar is focusing on the aforementioned sequels, with only one original film in the works: Coco, a 2017 film inspired by the iconic Mexican Día de los Muertos holiday, or Day of the Dead. In all, though no footage has been released so far, it sounds rather like Pixar's response to the 2014, 20th Century Fox film The Book of Life.

In the meantime, Pixar's sister studio Walt Disney Animation has put its focus on original films for the next few years. Although they recently announced a sequel to Wreck-It-Ralph, this year they've already released the original smash Zootopia, and will be releasing their first-ever Polynesian princess movie, Moana, later this year. The studio will also be releasing musical comedy Gigantic, a retelling of classic fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk.