Credit: Pixar Animation StudiosIf you thought Pixar was running out of ideas, think again.
The past few years have been rough for Pixar Animation. While the pandemic wasn’t easy on any film studio, Pixar was subjected to a string of streaming service releases — even when its parent company, The Walt Disney Company, returned other films to the big screen.
Pixar President Jim Morris previously confirmed the studio’s discontent at being shafted to the streaming platform. “I hope that we will not release another feature film on Disney+,” he told Bloomberg in May. “If we do more stuff for Disney+, it should be a series, and then that makes a clean demarcation between what we do for theaters and what we do for streaming.”
While Pixar’s creative output was very much devalued by Disney at this time, its actual output still wasn’t impressing critics quite like its former outings.
While Soul (2020), Luca (2021), and Turning Red (2022) all scored solid reviews, they haven’t become cult classics and provided franchise material quite like other Pixar efforts, such as Toy Story (1995), The Incredibles (2004), and Inside Out (2015). (The less said about the box office bomb that was Lightyear (2022), the better).
Fortunately, things have recently taken a turn for the better at Pixar. In 2023, Elemental proved to be a slow burner of a box office hit (pun intended), outperforming the cynical financial projections publicized shortly after its release.
This summer’s Inside Out 2 (2024) has also struck a real chord with audiences. The second installment in the Inside Out franchise follows the personified emotions of Riley (Kensington Tallman) as she first hits puberty.
Joy (Amy Poehler) proved to be as delightful as ever, but newcomers such as Anxiety (Maya Hawke) and Envy (Ayo Edebiri) really stole the show, pushing the film into new realms of emotional complexity. However, for some audiences, there was another, less obvious standout in Inside Out 2. We’re talking, of course, about Bill Andersen, AKA Riley’s dad (Kyle MacLachlan).
Although he may be relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of the film, Bill Andersen has earned a popular nickname among filmgoers: “Riley’s hot dad.” Simple yet effective.
This isn’t the first time it hit audiences that Riley’s dad is, apparently, hot. Back in 2017, Buzzfeed published a piece simply titled “It’s Finally Time We Talked About The Hot Dad From ‘Inside Out.’” With a subtitle that simply reads “a Pixar DILF,” it concluded, “Unfortunately, the movie is about his daughter so I’m already out of imagery for this post, BUT THANK YOU, PIXAR. Simply, thank you.”
Meanwhile, Variety ranked him as one of the hottest dads in animation (a very important ranking, we’ll have you know), where Bill Andersen is joined by the likes of Chief Benja in Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) and Jefferson Davis from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).
Since the first film was released, the internet’s new favorite animated male character has sparked thirsty tweets, fan edits, and even fan fiction. (Suddenly, Inside Out 2 raking in over a billion at the box office seems inevitable).
Now, however, we’ve reached a whole new era of Bill Andersen mania because even Pixar is posting thirst traps.
@pixar you’re welcome 😅 🎥: Inside Out, streaming on #DisneyPlus #Pixar #InsideOut
Yes, read that again: Pixar is team Hot Dad From Inside Out.
The animation studio shared a TikTok, which was essentially just a compilation of Bill Andersen looking fine, captioned with, “You’re welcome.”
As per the comment section, Pixar’s decision to veer into thirst traps raised a few eyebrows – but not necessarily in a bad way.
“Social media manager needs a raise NOW,” wrote one user.
Another wrote, “Y’all wild for this. In the best way,” while one Bill Andersen fan said, “New emotion unlocked.”
Meanwhile, another user said, “My daddy issues say thank you.”
While we personally never expected Pixar to enter the thirst trap space, we have to respect the creative shift (and also give a shoutout to whichever person on the studio’s social media team was brave enough to pitch a thirst trap of animation’s favorite “zaddy” in the first place).
What are your thoughts on Pixar’s latest project?