Pixar's sequel addiction has spread to a Monsters Inc. 3

It's been 13 years, and one since-ended streaming show, but Pixar's revving up for another Monsters sequel.

By William Hughes  |  March 6, 2026 | 10:43pm
Monsters University, Screenshot: YouTube
Film News Monsters Inc.
Pixar's sequel addiction has spread to a Monsters Inc. 3

It’d be disingenuous to suggest that Pixar’s embrace of sequels is some newly-forged pivot toward repetition; Toy Story 2 was the studio’s third film ever, arriving after A Bug’s Life back in 1999, so it’s not like the studio was ever truly averse to a double dip. But the pace at which the Disney-owned animation studio has been going back to the well has picked up a bit in recent years, with five or six sequels (depending on how you want to label Lightyear) in the last decade of moviemaking, with additional entries added to the Finding Nemo, Cars, Incredibles, Toy Story, and Inside Out franchises. (The latter feels especially telling, in so far as 2024’s Inside Out 2 has been the studio’s only really serious box office hit since the pandemic lockdowns, despite a number of efforts to branch out.)

Now the big Wheel O’ Sequels has apparently spun back around to Monsters Inc., with the Wall Street Journal reporting tonight that a third movie in the fantasy-but-it’s-also-kind-of-a-workplace-comedy-and-there’s-also-some-environmentalism-in-there? franchise is apparently in the works. No details are up for grabs yet about the project, even down to who’s directing it or when it might roughly be expected to land in theaters. But, nevertheless: Mike and Sully are apparently coming back.

Monsters, Inc., released back in 2001, never got a formal sequel; instead, producers went with the prequel route, releasing the college comedy Monsters University in 2013. (That being said, John Goodman and Billy Crystal both came back, in limited roles, for a TV series, Monsters At Work, that ran on Disney+ and Disney Channel in the early 2020s.) 

Although it’s got an original, Hoppers, in theaters this weekend, Pixar’s current upcoming slate is undeniably sequel heavy. Toy Story 5 is out in June, a Coco sequel is in the works for 2029, and the WSJ report included news that a previously announced Incredibles 3 is now being aimed at a 2028 date in theaters. It’s not all follow-ups, though: Gatto, about a “feline thief in Venice” comes out next year, and Turning Red director Domee Shi reportedly has an animated musical in the works at the studio.

 
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