Pixar | The Verge

Pixar is heading back to Italy for its next big film

2025-06-13T10:47:35-04:00

Though Disney and Pixar are about to start getting everyone hyped for Toy Story 5, the studios are already working hard on another feature.

While Disney and Pixar opened their Annecy presentation with more details about their next movie, Elio, and gave updates about Toy Story 5, the studio surprised festival goers by announcing that Luca director Enrico Casarosa and producer Andrea Warren are working on a new film due out in 2027. Titled Gatto, the movie will tell the story of a music-loving black cat living in Venice who bonds with a young human girl as he tries to disentangle himself from the city's feline crime scene. According to Deadli …

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Everything you need to know about Disney, ESPN, and Bob Iger’s return as CEO

2026-02-02T09:38:38-05:00

Disney has had a tumultuous run since Bob Iger’s return as the company’s CEO, which came just two years after he handed the reins over to Bob Chapek. Iger has since worked to undo some of Chapek’s changes as the company contends with a streaming-focused future.

Iger has big plans for the future of Disney and has already combined the Disney Plus and Hulu apps for bundle subscribers in the US. Disney is also gearing up to launch a streaming-only version of ESPN that will exist in addition to a new live sports streaming partnership with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Outside of streaming, Iger is hoping to boost Disney’s slate of films and reinvigorate interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But with Iger’s contract set to expire in 2026, a lot remains unclear about what’s next for the future of Disney. Here are all the major changes Iger has made so far.

Pixar’s Elemental will hit Disney Plus streaming on September 13th

2023-09-06T13:22:16-04:00

A still from Elemental. | Image: Disney / Pixar

Disney has announced that Disney Plus subscribers will be able to stream Elemental, its parable about interracial relationships, beginning September 13th. The company is also releasing a making-of documentary for the film, called Good Chemistry: The Story of Elemental, and an Up-related short called Carl's Date for its streaming service.

Our own Charles Pulliam-Moore praised the film's visuals in his review for The Verge. But he felt the racial framing suffered, partially from the elements-as-people metaphor but potentially also from the writers' eagerness to avoid mistakes made in Zootopia.

Elemental, which had a $200 million budget, mana …

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Elemental’s co-writers wanted it to be open, honest, and not another Zootopia

2023-06-21T12:21:35-04:00

Wade and Ember taking in a movie together. | Image: Pixar

As straightforward as the metaphors in Pixar's Elemental seem at a glance, the more you think about the movie's city full of anthropomorphized classical elements, the more questions come to mind about what the film's creators were trying to say beyond "love conquers all, even creatively imagined racism." Elemental repeatedly returns to that heartening concept as it tells the tale of how Ember, a headstrong woman made of fire, and Wade, a waterlogged city employee, fall head over heels for one another.

But at the same time that Elemental's showing you how trusting in one's heart can lead to true romance, the movie's conceit - what if the wor …

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Elemental’s a periodic table of metaphors that don’t always work the way Pixar wants

2023-06-16T09:30:00-04:00

As often as people like to accuse Disney and Pixar of playing to political correctness or "going woke," it's actually a rather rare occasion when the studio puts out projects - movies especially - that try to directly engage with topics like structural / institutional racism or interracial dating. Elemental, Pixar's new feature from director Peter Sohn, attempts to reflect on all of those realities about our world with a pun-filled story about two star-crossed lovers pulled together by fate in spite of the larger forces working to keep them apart.

In its conception of a world where everyone falls into one of four classical elemental categor …

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Elemental’s first trailer is a bubbling, sizzling feast for the eyes

2023-03-28T10:45:00-04:00

Thematically, Pixar's Elemental, from director Peter Sohn, might not seem like the studio's most imaginative animated feature. But if the movie's first full trailer is any indication, Elemental's going to be a mesmerizing visual feat.

Elemental tells the story of Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) and Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), two of the countless citizens who call a sprawling megacity teeming with other elemental beings like them home. With Ember living among her fellow fire people (think Howl's Moving Castle's Calcifer) and Wade keeping mostly to his fellow water folk (think Osmosis Jones but drippier), they never expected to meet one another, …

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Ahsoka, Loki season 2, and Secret Invasion are all part of Disney Plus’ teaser for 2023

2022-12-19T13:10:50-05:00

Disney Plus subscribers probably still have a back catalog of shows and movies from 2022 to watch. That said, the streamer's already gearing up to hit the ground running in the new year with a bevy of returning series like The Mandalorian and Loki and a few new ones like Ahsoka and Secret Invasion.

Though it doesn't reveal all that much about any of the new series debuting next year, Disney Plus' new teaser trailer for all of its forthcoming shows does make clear that the House of Mouse is sticking to its guns in 2023 by offering up even more live-action Marvel and Star Wars fare. Pedro Pascal's Din Djarin and Grogu are both (obviously) ret …

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Lightyear will be available to stream on Disney Plus in August

2022-07-19T14:20:49-04:00

Buzz Lightyear in Lightyear. | Image: Disney / Pixar

Lightyear, Disney and Pixar's Buzz Lightyear-focused movie that hit theaters in June, will be available to stream on Disney Plus beginning August 3rd.

Get ready to blast off with Disney and Pixar's #Lightyear, streaming August 3 only on #DisneyPlus. ðŸš€ðŸ’« pic.twitter.com/K75UdXQQrg
- Disney+ (@DisneyPlus) July 19, 2022

Lightyear stars Chris Evans as Buzz Lightyear, though he's not the toy Buzz Lightyear you might be familiar with from Toy Story - instead, Evans portrays a sci-fi action hero Buzz Lightyear in a movie about the character. My colleague Charles Pulliam-Moore called the film "a visual stunner with a predictable story" in his …

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Lightyear’s a stiff-as-plastic deconstruction of heroic space dramas

2022-06-18T12:00:00-04:00

Buzz Lightyear gazing at something in space. | Image: Pixar / Disney

Pixar and Disney have hyped director Angus MacLane's Lightyear up by making it out as a mysterious reworking of Toy Story's canon that reveals all-new details about Andy Davis' favorite space explorer. Though a new version of Buzz anchors the film, its story about how reaching for the stars can lead to people losing hold of the important things right in front of them is actually more about taking its titular astronaut off a pedestal and unpacking why we tend to frame people like him as heroes.

Lightyear tells the story of Buzz (Chris Evans), one of the headstrong Galactic Rangers of Star Command who's committed his life to the organization' …

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Pixar’s Lightyear is going to be about traveling through time as well as space

2022-04-21T11:51:36-04:00

Pixar and Disney's upcoming Lightyear feature has already thrown people with the idea of it being an origin story about the "real" space ranger Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear is apparently based on. That aspect of the feature immediately raised questions about whether Toy Story's been set in some sort futuristic universe this whole time without acknowledging it, or if the studios were dancing around Lightyear actually being an in-universe movie about Buzz.

Lightyear's latest trailer doesn't clarify if either of those situations are the case, but it does lay out the broad strokes of the movie's plot and reveal yet another interesting twist to it …

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