Scheduled for 2026, Toy Story 5 is one of the most ambitious projects currently being worked on by Pixar. After saying goodbye to his friends at the end of Toy Story 4, cowboy Woody will make his grand return in the fifth installment. Pixar Explains His Return!
Why will Woody return in Toy Story 5?
While the perfect ending of Toy Story 3 seemed to close the door on any idea of a sequel to the famous franchise, Pixar finally created a surprise in 2019 with Toy Story 4. In this new adventure, Woody reached the end of a cycle by realizing that he could become something other than Bonnie's toy. At the end of the feature film, he said a heartbreaking goodbye to his toy friends and set off on an adventure with the shepherdess Bo Peep. Although this sequel was unnecessary, Pixar demonstrated its talent by delivering a feature film that was both hilarious and moving, enhanced by animation and art direction that suffered from no flaws. As a result, Toy Story 4 surpassed $1 billion at the box office and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, having charmed audiences and critics alike.
Despite this enormous success, Pete Docter—the studio's chief creative officer—announced that Pixar would no longer produce sequels to its masterpieces and would focus on the original films. Unfortunately, this laudable desire clashed with economic reality and pressure from its parent company, The Walt Disney Company. As a result, while Pixar doesn't abandon the original films - three feature films will be released between 2025 and 2027 - three sequels have been announced: Toy Story 5, The Incredibles 3, and Coco 2. So will Toy Story 5 be one film too many? While we can indeed fear this, several elements nevertheless push us to view the project in a more positive light.
First of all, as already mentioned on this site, Toy Story 5 will mark the return of the brilliant Andrew Stanton to directing and writing. An iconic member of Pixar, he co-directed some of the studio's greatest films: A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and Finding Dory. He also co-wrote the screenplays for Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and Toy Story 3 (for which he developed the original story), before writing the entire screenplay for the fourth installment. So we can say that Stanton knows the characters intimately... While the filmmaker had moved away from the studio to direct episodes for prestigious live-action series, including Stranger Things, the excellent Tales from the Loop and The Three-Body Problem.
Then, as was recalled at the Annecy Animation Film Festival, which is currently taking place and during which Pixar announced a new animated film with a visual style reminiscent of the Arcane series, our favorite toys will be confronted with the arrival of tablets and digital games aimed at younger children. We thus learned the identity of the main antagonist of the film. The Disney and Pixar conference was also the opportunity to learn the reason for Woody's return in Toy Story 5; Indeed, in order to fight Lily Pad, who wants to separate Bonnie from her toys, Jesse will seek out Woody to ask him for help. A mystery solved!
Note that the first images of Toy Story 5 were unveiled in Annecy. Given that the film Toy Story - which was, let's remember, Pixar's first animated feature - will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary next November, we can expect a trailer in the fall of 2025. As a reminder, Toy Story 5 will be released on June 17, 2026, three months after the release of Hoppers, another very promising Pixar film that we are eagerly awaiting!
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