Toy Story 5 writer-director Andrew Stanton on spending 34 years with the franchise

Andrew Stanton has spent more than half his life with Toy Story. He was the lead writer on the first three movies in the franchise, a script saviour on the fourth, and now, co-writer and co-director of Toy Story 5. “It wasn’t the plan. But it wasn’t not the plan,” he says. Stanton has done more than think about Woody and Buzz for the past 34 years. At Pixar, he made A Bug’s Life and two Oscar-winners: Finding Nemo and Wall-E. But Toy Story was the movie that started it all, the one he and his peers could not believe they got to make. Everything that has happened since, he says, has been gravy. The new film, scheduled for general release in June, is widely expected to be one of the summer’s biggest hits. The past two movies both made more than a billion dollars each, and this one is probably on the same path. But while there is a business driving many of the decisions regarding the series, Stanton says they have also had a lot of time to think about where the story should go. It is show business, but they always try to put the “show” first. Remember, there was an 11-year gap between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, and nine more years before Toy Story 4. It was around 2008, when they had finally cracked the story for Toy Story 3 and decided that it would be the end of their time with Andy as he went off to college, that Stanton started to think wider. Continuing the story “What if it went further? What if it was a trilogy with one kid, closed that up, handed it off to another kid and started another one?” Stanton says. “That seemed really exciting to me because that’s the way life really goes with toys and mementoes. They get passed down as hand-me-downs; they go from one kid to another.” One thing Stanton does not love about the Toy Story movies is the numbers. Toy Story is not Rocky – it is something else. “They make it sound like old blockbuster thinking,” Stanton says. “The culture’s changed in the last 15 years. We all understand binging now. We all understand episodic stories. Not everything’s great for it, but some are, and the Toy Story world is meant for that kind of lengthy thinking.” Thus, Toy Story 4 was the beginning of the Bonnie years. Though some of the actors were publicly saying it was the last Toy Story, as Woody went off with Bo Peep and the rest of the toys stayed with Bonnie, Stanton was pretty sure it was going to keep going. Bonnie’s arc was not complete. He just did not know they would come knocking on his door to figure out how to make it so. “I was sceptical at first because I didn’t know if where I would want to see it go would match with where the studio would want to see it go,” he says. “I cautiously said, let me write the c****y first draft, because I always write a c****y first draft, but at least I’ll figure out myself where I’d like to see it go just as a fan, let alone somebody that’s been behind the camera with it. And if we agree on that fundamentally, then can we start working on it, and I’ll take the job.” Keeping things timeless He also wanted a collaborator by his side, so Kenna Harris (Ciao Alberto) joined as co-writer and co-director. Harris was around the same age Stanton was when he was working on Toy Story, which felt like fate. In Harris, Stanton found someone to whom he could pass knowledge and learn from. Together, they found more commonalities than differences. “It’s really trying to find the things that are timeless, you know?” Stanton says, “Because childhood is gonna keep happening.” Toy Story 5 sees the arrival of a new thing that is taking Bonnie’s attention away from her toys: The Lilypad. Stanton kept checking with the lawyers to make sure it was not copyrighted or a real thing. It was not, they assured him. While the screentime conversation might not be new, how it affects playtime with these toys is something they have not yet explored. “I feel like we’re kind of late to the party. I was worried there would be some sort of resolution to it before we finished and there wouldn’t be so much dramatic controversy about it, but it’s a legitimate concern that has no complete, finite answer,” Stanton says. “That’s drama, it’s in the grey. It is like, how do you navigate something that you have to deal with? It’s not just, ‘Get rid of it.’” There were similar conversations about television for kids of his era. He knows that, like television, technology is not going away. Toy Story 5 also places more direct emphasis on the power of play and imagination, something they dabbled with in the opening of Toy Story 3, but that they really get to lean into with the latest film. ‘The magic of movies’ Stanton does not think too much about the box office any more. While working on the original Toy Story, he liked to say that they were making films for the grandkids. It might have been a bit of magical thinking for a fledgling studio and a man with a very young family, but in three decades, it has come true. Stanton’s grandchild is now watching the Pixar movies he helped create. Recently, Stanton was at Skywalker Ranch – a movie ranch and the workplace of George Lucas, located in a secluded area of Marin County, California – finishing the mix for Toy Story 5. It was the first time he got to step back and take it in as a movie and not the jigsaw puzzle he had been building for so long. “That’s when it kind of breaks my brain. I’m going, ‘Oh my God, there’s all the characters just living their lives,’” Stanton says. “And that’s the magic of movies. You forget that anybody behind the scenes made it and you just believe, and that’s the real drug.”

Toy Story 5 writer-director Andrew Stanton on spending 34 years with the franchise

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Stanton, who has written for every Toy Story movie, talks about directing the upcoming fifth film and taking things in new directions

Stanton, who has written for every Toy Story movie, talks about directing the upcoming fifth film and taking things in new directions