Credit: Pixar/Apple TV+, edited by Inside the MagicTim Allen has said what we’ve all been thinking: four Toy Story movies might have been too many. However, apparently, that is not keeping Disney CEO Bob Iger from pushing for a fifth installment of the beloved CGI animation franchise.
Tim Allen has starred as Buzz Lightyear in (nearly) every film in the Toy Story franchise since the groundbreaking first movie, which kicked off both a huge multimedia franchise and the future of Pixar Animation Studios. Along with Tom Hanks as Woody the Cowboy, Allen is the heart and soul of the series and, unquestionably, one of its biggest draws.
It is extremely telling that Lightyear (2022), the odd spinoff of Toy Story starring Chris Evans as a human version of the space adventurer who was the inspiration for the show watched by characters within the movies, was one of Pixar’s biggest flops in years, even though it had the force of a beloved series behind it. Clearly, Tim Allen was part of the magic that Lightyear lacked.
Related: ‘Lightyear’s’ Flop Results in the Most Significant Pixar Layoffs in Decades
But Lightyear was not the only flop that Disney (the owner of Pixar) suffered in the last couple of years. The adventure film Strange World did terribly at the box office, the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid severely underperformed with audiences, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania showed some of the first cracks in Marvel Studios’ dominance.
Now that The Marvels has premiered to the worst-ever performance by an MCU movie, Disney absolutely needs a sure thing at the box office. It is no surprise that the very cost-cutting-oriented Bob Iger would think of Toy Story, despite the franchise already being stretched thin by sequels, television series, Disney Parks, and more Mr Potato Head merchandise than anyone would have thought probable in 1995.
Tim Allen recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and revealed that Disney had reached out to him and Tom Hanks, basically informing them that Toy Story 5 was happening, no matter what. Allen said, “Bob Iger, head of Disney, said it was on…He actually said it was going to happen. They have reached out to Tom and I to reprise the roles. They’re not saying anything about it.”
Related: New ‘Toy Story’ Breaks Disney+
Notably, Tim Allen did not mention whether he or Tom Hanks had actually committed to another movie in the series yet, which raises the question if Disney would pull the trigger and go ahead without the original stars.
Tim Allen also raised the question if Toy Story had run out of steam, saying, “You wonder if four was too many, is five too much? According to the scuttlebutts, the writer that’s doing it wrote one of the better ones, and he said, ‘If I didn’t get this right, I wouldn’t do it.’ So it could be a very, very interesting way to reunite it.”
We’ll have to wait and see if Disney can get Tim Allen and Tom Hanks, but maybe we should be wondering whether they should be trying.
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