The Toy Story franchise seemed to reach a nice ending point with Toy Story 3, which left a lot of people shocked when it was announced that a fourth installment was on the way. Of course, if Pixar and Disney have decided not to stop with a trilogy, could that mean there are even more Toy Story movies are on the way? Tim Allen, the voice of Buzz Lightyear, says that if more sequels are on the agenda, he's certainly ready. According to Allen...
Once you've gotten to four, you're passed that trilogy [point], so I don't see any reason why they wouldn't do it, certainly. If you ask me, I'd say do five.
Toy Story 4 will be here this summer and as far as we know, it will be the last Toy Story movie, but that's what we thought about the last one. In the same way that movies tend to fit neatly into a three act structure, that structure can also be expanded so that a trilogy of films does the same thing. This is why so many successful franchises end up becoming movie trilogies.
However, for those movies that go beyond part three they frequently go even further than that. Fast and Furious is planning to do 10 films plus at least one spinoff. The Fantastic Beasts series is still looking at doing five movies.
Tim Allen tells ET that if Pixar has decided to go beyond part three for Toy Story, there's no real reason they should then stop at four.
He's not entirely crazy. Rather than being a new ending to the Toy Story franchise, it's possible that Toy Story 4 could be a new beginning. Perhaps this will be the beginning of a new trilogy and so we won't only see Toy Story 4 but 5 and 6 as well.
Of course, if that was an intentional plan, it's likely Pixar would have announced that at the time they announced Toy Story 4 in the first place. A lot of people's response to the new Toy Story movie was some flavor of "wait, why?" and if there had been a new trilogy of films announced, there's a good chance that actually would have quelled some fears. A new movie gives the impression the studio is trying to keep a successful franchise alive even after its run its course, a new trilogy implies that the story actually has someplace to go and this has all been thought through.
Pixar has always said that the story comes first and no movie would move forward if there wasn't a solid idea for a story attached. However, we also know that this idea has gone through a lot of changes and thus it's unclear just how strong the initial idea actually was. Of course, Pixar also says that the story is in flux in all of the studio's productions, so changes here, however significant, are par for the course.
What is certainly clear here is that if somebody at Pixar has an idea for Toy Story 5 that is deemed good, the idea would almost certainly be explored. As Tim Allen says, we're now past the point of trilogy so there's no reason to stop simply for the sake of claiming the story has "ended." Of course, at some point, you're going to run out of stories to tell with the same characters, so eventually we will see a final Toy Story we just may not know it when it happens.
