Animated sequels for the Toy Story, Frozen and Zootopia franchises are in development at Disney. During the company’s first-quarter earnings conference call, held early Thursday, returning CEO Bob Iger confirmed the news, just after announcing the massive layoffs of 7,000 employees as a cost-saving measure. “I am very pleased to announce today that we have sequels in the works from our animation studios to some of our most beloved franchises, Toy Story, Frozen and Zootopia,” Iger said on the conference call. “We’ll have more to share about these productions soon, but this is a great example of how we draw on our unrivaled brands and franchises.”
Currently the toy story Franchise consists of four films and a spin-off title called light year, which focused on titular space cadet Buzz Lightyear as a human rather than a toy. While the latter underperformed at the commercial level, each of the mainline entries saw both critical and commercial success toy story 3 And toy story 4 managed to surpass the billion dollar mark (roughly Rs. 8,267 crore). toy story 4in particular was crowned Best Animated Feature at the 2020 oscars, alongside a nomination for Best Original Song on Randy Newman’s “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away”. Not to mention the original from 1995 toy storywas Pixar first fully realized computer-animated film.
2013 Frozen strengthened Disney on a new path to success. After winning two awards at the 2014 Oscars – Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song – and becoming one of the best-selling Blu-ray discs in the US, it spawned a couple of animated shorts, followed by a feature-length sequel in late 2019. frozen 2 grossed US$1.45 billion (approx. Rs.11,981) at the worldwide box office from a production budget of US$150 million (approx.
In the meantime, Zootopiaan animated buddy cop comedy starring anthropomorphic animals, also managed to surpass $1 billion on a budget similar to that of frozen 2. While the franchise hasn’t had any theatrical sequels — until now — parts of the lore have been explored in direct-to-stream Zootopia+, which consisted of six short episodes. It makes sense that Disney would go with established franchises since their recent original IPs haven’t fared too well commercially. The most recent example would be strange worldwhich was able to collect only 73.4 million US dollars (about 6.07 billion rupees) worldwide, against a reported budget of $180 million (about Rs. 1,487 crore).
As mentioned, this news was published after the CEO iger announced layoffs for up to 7,000 workers in the company, representing 3.2 percent of Disney’s workforce. The decision was made to generate about US$5.5 billion (about Rs.45,444 billion) in cost savings and make the streaming business profitable. Iger was brought back on board in November on a two-year deal to bring the entertainment giant back to its full potential. The CEO confirmed at the time that he would do so maintain the hiring freeze this ex-CEO Bob Chapek had used.
At the moment, toy story 5, Frozen 3And Zootopia 2 do not have confirmed release windows.
