The dream is over — at least on the TV front. Even thoughPixarfans might be as excited for the animation studios' TV productions as much as they are for the movies, a Pixar worker came forward to reveal that Disney will probably shift away from streaming-only projects for Pixar in the foreseeable future.Mike Jonesserved as writer forSoulandLuca, as well as director for the upcoming Pixar seriesDream Productions. In an interview toIndieWire, Jones talked about how budget restraints and other aspects led Disney to pull the plug on several TV projects that were in production at Pixar.
During the interview, Jones revealed that one of the factors that impacted theproduction of TV projectswas the fact that Disney did a round of layoffs earlier this year, whichcut almost 200 staffers from Pixar. This means that other teams were stretched thin to keep working on projects under development. Jones commented that he doesn’t “know that we’re gonna do any more streaming after this because we took a lot of resources from the other things at Pixar.” The writer and director further explained that since movies likeInside Out 2are bringing in a billion-dollar payday, Disneydoesn’t want to focus on smaller projects.
“While it’s a pretty major company, because it spends so much time on these movies, it can’t afford to do too much of this at once. It can really only afford to focus on one or two things. And so when Disney led us to streaming, it was suddenly inserting something else in there. So we were kind of an underdog.”
‘Dream Productions’ Is Like An “Indie Movie”
Jones also revealed toIndieWirethatDream Productionsis essentially an 82-minute movie broken down in four episodes. However, since there were no plans to release it in theaters as anInside Out 2prequel, the budget for the series was farless than Pixar projects tend to receive. The director called the series “a weird little indie movie” within Pixar. Chances are, we’ll be able to tell the difference when the time comes to press play on theInside Outspin-off series.
Pixar has another original series slated to premiere soon:Win or LosehitsDisney+on August 12, 2025. However, if Jones' predictions are correct, this might be the last we see ofPixar original seriesfor the foreseeable future, especially with juggernauts likeToy Story 5andIncredibles 3already in development and probably taking up most of the studios' workforce. It’s also likely that, with such an amazing performance in theaters,Inside Outgets athird installment announcementsooner rather than later: the sequel is currently thehighest-grossing movie from 2024.
Dream Productionswill take place betweenInside OutandInside Out 2and reveal what happens inside the mind of Riley when the little girl is asleep. The series is slated to premiere on December 11.
