Pixar Confirms ‘Inside Out 3’ Already in the Works Despite Terrible Summer Box Office

Inside Out 3 already seems to be in the workers, according to Pixar filmmakers, despite worries of a historically bad summer box office.

The Walt Disney Company and Pixar Animation Studios have not had a great time at the box office recently. After decades of near-continuous critical and commercial overperformance, Disney saw a major stumble in its grosses in the last three years. Although the COVID-19 pandemic was certainly responsible for at least some of the underwhelming box office of movies like The Marvels (2023) and Wish (2023), at a certain point, it can’t blamed for every failure from every branch of the company.

Related: ‘Inside Out 2’ Changes Story, Cuts Controversial New German Emotion

Unexpectedly, Pixar turned out to be the lone real success for all of Disney last year. Elemental (2023) initially appeared to be something of a lukewarm performer for the studio when it hit theaters but managed to become a long-burning sleeper hit. The movie grossed nearly $500 million at the box office, signaling that Pixar might be on track to become the torchbearer of the company over Marvel or Disney Animation.

Disney is hoping that Inside Out 2, the sequel to the 2o15 Peter Docter film, will be able to keep the momentum going for Pixar and bring in some much needed film revenue. It turns out that the Mouse is actually so on board with the Inside Out franchise that the director of the second movie is already considering ideas for a third.

That is fortunate, considering that the summer box office for 2024 (long considered the primary season for commercial blockbusters in the American market) is expected to drastically underperform without multiple tentpole projects for Marvel Studios or Lucasfilm (per CNBC).

Notably, the first potential blockbuster of the year, The Fall Guy, crashed in theaters, spooking film investors and analysts. Roth MKM managing director Eric Handler said, “The Fall Guy had quality co-stars in Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, but the lack of a known franchise brand and a niche storyline made it too narrow to attract a mass summer-like audience.”

It makes a great deal of sense, then, that Disney and Pixar are trying to push a known, beloved property on audiences and potentially even follow that with another sequel. At a press event at the Pixar Animation campus in Emeryville, California, director Kelsey Mann revealed that he already has an idea for Inside Out 3, even without the studio speaking up.

Related: ‘Inside Out 2’ Launches New Disney Beauty Line

Mann discussed (via SlashFilm) a gag that he had wanted to get into Inside Out 2, involving a part of Riley’s (Kensington Tallman) growing teenage mind. He said:

“I hesitate ’cause I’m like, ‘It’s a good idea and it should come back, and I don’t know what’s going to happen in this world, but this needs to come back.’ We had a land called Procrastination Land, and I love that land. The joke with was that it was always under construction, and it’s a coming-soon Procrastination Land. And they’re like, ‘When are they going to finish that place?’ They’re like, ‘Ah. They’ll get around to it.’ We had workers who were like, ‘Hey, should we start building this land today?’ They’re like, ‘Nah,’ and they’re on their phones. They’re like, ‘Maybe tomorrow.’ It’s such a good gag.”

From what the director revealed, it sounds like “Procrastination Land” was an idea for Inside Out 2 that Pixar could never quite figure out. He said, “I just couldn’t fit it in a natural way. It always felt forced… So suddenly, the movie came to a complete halt, and we’re like, ‘This is really funny.’ But it just stopped. You know? But I swear we can make that work.”

The chances of Inside Out 3 hitting theaters in a few years are pretty good, but it’s all going to depend on how Inside Out 2 does this summer.

What summer movie are you looking forward to? Tell us in the comments below!

Inside Out 2 is scheduled to be released in theaters on June 14. It will feature the voices of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan, with new actors Tony Hale, Liza Lapira, Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, and Kensington Tallman all joining the cast.

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