“We’re kind of fishing around,” quips Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter.
Finding Nemo just keeps swimming.
Pixar Animation Studios president Jim Morris told Bloomberg that the studio is considering new sequels for the Finding Nemo and Incredibles franchises, which have gone dormant since 2016’s Finding Dory and 2018’s Incredibles 2. According to Pete Docter, Pixar’s chief creative officer who worked on 2003’s Finding Nemo as part of its original brain trust, there’s an ocean’s worth of potential for another follow-up to the two films that grossed nearly $2 billion combined at the global box office.
“Where else have we not gone in the ocean? The ocean’s a big place,” Docter told Bloomberg. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. We’re kind of fishing around.”
Following the company’s recent restructuring, Pixar plans to make three movies every two years, alternating between sequels and spinoffs (the upcoming Inside Out 2 and Toy Story 5) and original ideas (Elio and an undisclosed project from Turning Red director Domee Shi).
Only two Pixar franchises have turned into trilogies — Toy Story and Cars — and with the former, it was a decade wait between the last two sequels. It took 13 years for Pixar to follow Finding Nemo with Finding Dory, which is, so far, director Andrew Stanton’s last project at the studio. (Stanton was part of Pixar’s first brain trust with Docter, Toy Story and Cars director John Lasseter, who has since exited the company, and the late animator and storyman Joe Ranft.)
“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,” Morris said in a 2016 interview. “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.”
Upcoming Pixar movies include Inside Out 2 (June 14), Elio (June 13, 2025), an untitled Pixar (March 6, 2026), and Toy Story 5 (June 19, 2026).
