‘Incredibles 2’ Director Brad Bird Not Thinking About ‘Incredibles 3’

Incredibles 2 writer-director Brad Bird isn’t mulling over a potential second sequel to his 2004 Pixar superhero hit just yet.

Asked by host Scott Mantz during an IMAX and AMC Q&A if he’s given thought to a third Incredibles, Bird sighed heavily, answering, “Let’s find the maternity ward and ask all the new mothers how they feel about the next kid! ‘Come on, you can do it!’”

14-years-later sequel Incredibles 2 marks Bird’s first time crafting a sequel to a property he helped create.

Pixar is no stranger to wide gaps between films: there was an 11-year gap between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, 12 years between Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University, and 13 years between Finding Nemo and Finding Dory.

While both Bird and the Disney-owned animation studio long fielded cries for a sequel to The Incredibles, Bird would only move forward on a second if the filmmakers “had a story that we wanted to tell,” Bird told press during a visit to Pixar Animation Studios in April.

“The thing is that many sequels are cash grabs,” Bird said. “And there’s a saying in the business that I can’t stand where they go, ‘You don’t make another one, you’re leaving money on the table.’ Jesus, you know, money on the table is not what makes me get up in the morning. Making something that people are going to enjoy 100 years from now is what gets me up.”

“So if it were a cash grab,” Bird added, “we would not have taken 14 years. It makes no financial sense to wait this long. It’s sheerly [because] we had a story that we wanted to tell.”

Of the challenges on making a sequel, the key component was staying true to the world and the characters established by its predecessor.

“I think the main thing is just staying in what was unique about the first film, which is the superhero part is secondary to the parts of the roles you play within a family,” Bird said during Wednesday’s Q&A.

“Every one of us has been the newborn baby, many of us have been the super, hyper-energetic ten-year-old, the insecure teenager, and many of us have grown up to become parents. And all of that is connectable in a way, and then you add the superhero-ness just to spin it on its head. So I think that’s where we had to keep our eye focused. But I think the challenge with a sequel is feeling like its the same universe and same characters as the original film, but being unexpected at the same time, and that’s hard to do.”

Bird recently shot down sequels to past works The Iron Giant and Pixar’s own Ratatouille, saying “I feel like that story is told.”

Incredibles 2 opens June 15.