Disney’s annual meeting for shareholders brought some much-awaited news in 2014, as the company announced that The Incredibles 2 is actively being developed, after a decade of writer/director Brad Bird expressing his interest in making the sequel one day (should a great idea come to him), but not much else. As with all Pixar sequels, there’s a question of whether the imaginative computer-animation studio would be better off exploring a never-before-seen world, rather than revisiting familiar territory, but for now the general attitude towards a new adventure with the Incredibles is quite positive.
Bird is currently working on the Incredibles 2 script, though he’s not yet confirmed to direct the film. However, with the exception of the 1987 sci-fi flick *batteries not included (which Bird worked on long before his feature directing days), the filmmaker has ended up directing every movie screenplay that he’s collaborated on. Which is to say, chances are good that Bird will take the helm on Incredibles 2, once he finishes post-production on his upcoming live-action sci-fi/fantasy adventure for the Mouse House, titled Tomorrowland.
It’s much too early to expect any concrete plot details to be leaked for the Incredibles sequel yet, though in an interview last week with Digital Spy - as part of his promotional tour for Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Samuel L. Jackson revealed that his character from the first movie, Lucius Best/Frozone (whose super-power allows him to freeze water and moisture) will be included in the proceedings:
Every time I run into Brad [Bird, director] he always tells me Frozone is part of what’s going on [in the sequel], so I have to believe that. I guess they could be the Incredibles without Frozone, but I think Frozone would be a wonderful addition to what’s already there.
Jackson then added, “I’m just looking forward to seeing what Jack-Jack turned into,” in reference to the youngest member of the Incredibles clan (see the image below) – who, during the original movie’s conclusion and in the spinoff short “Jack-Jack Attack”, was revealed to posses a rather strange (and non-specific) collection of super-abilities.
One possibility speculated by our editors on the Screen Rant Underground Podcast is that the Incredibles sequel will pick-up in real time after the first movie, similar to the approach that Pixar took when it released Toy Story 3 eleven years after the second Toy Story installment. That would mean that Incredibles 2 could feature older versions of all the characters from the first movie, making it feasible that Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, along with Frozone, will have all either permanently retired their superhero personas or are near to doing so, while a teenage Jack-Jack is just coming into his own.
That Frozone will return for Incredibles 2 - regardless of what shape the story ultimately takes – makes sense, given how the character was integral to the manner in which that film establishes what life is like for the remaining superheroes outside the Incredibles clan in the first movie – to mention nothing of Lucius’ popularity with fans and Jackson’s real-life working relationship with Disney. Much like it makes sense for Gill (Willem Dafoe) to come back in the upcoming Finding Nemo sequel Finding Dory, it’ll be fun to see how Frozone fits into the larger puzzle that is Bird’s latest team-up collaboration with Pixar.