Pixar used to be the studio that proved you didn't need franchises to print money. Up, Wall-E, Ratatouille - original stories that became instant classics and box office gold. That Pixar is dead.

The studio announced this week that Incredibles 3 is scheduled for 2028, Coco 2 is expected in 2029, and a third Monsters Inc. film is in development. According to The Wall Street Journal, this represents a fundamental shift in strategy - one that Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter has reportedly struggled with behind the scenes.

This isn't just another studio pivoting to sequels. This is Pixar, the animation house that won Oscars by taking risks. The studio that convinced Hollywood that original IP could outperform established franchises. Now they're becoming exactly what they once disrupted.

The business case is obvious. Inside Out 2 grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide. Toy Story films are reliable money-printing machines. But here's what gets lost in the spreadsheets: Pixar's brand was originality. Parents trusted that a Pixar film would be worth their time and money precisely because the studio had the courage to tell new stories well.

To their credit, Pixar isn't going full franchise mode. The slate includes two new originals: Ono Ghost Market and the studio's first musical. But the ratio has shifted dramatically. Under Bob Iger's return to Disney, the mandate is clear: build franchises, reduce risk, maximize returns.

Docter, who directed Up, Inside Out, and Soul, has been navigating this tension since taking over creative leadership in 2018. He's a true believer in original storytelling, but he's also a company man trying to balance art with commerce. According to the Journal, that balance is getting harder to maintain.

The irony is that Pixar's recent original films - Soul, Luca, Turning Red - were critically acclaimed but sent straight to Disney+ during the pandemic. They never got the chance to prove themselves theatrically. Meanwhile, Lightyear, a franchise play, bombed spectacularly. But Hollywood learns the wrong lessons from failure. A bad original means "originals don't work." A bad sequel means "we marketed it wrong."

Here's the thing about sequels: the best ones - Toy Story 3, The Incredibles 2 (for most of its runtime) - work because they have something new to say. The worst ones exist purely as IP exploitation. Which category will these new sequels fall into? We won't know until 2028.

But the larger question is what happens to Pixar's creative culture when the majority of your slate is sequels. When your most ambitious directors know the only way to get a massive budget is to pitch Inside Out 3 instead of something genuinely new. When "risky" means "not based on existing IP."

Hollywood has always had a franchise problem. But Pixar was supposed to be different. They were different, for 25 years. Now they're just another studio choosing safety over innovation, betting that audiences will show up for recognizable characters instead of great stories.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe Incredibles 3 will be a masterpiece. Maybe Docter will thread the needle between commerce and art. But the trend line is clear, and it doesn't point toward the Pixar that made us believe a robot love story could work, or that a rat could teach us about creativity, or that an old man's grief could lift us up.

In Hollywood, nobody knows anything - except that franchises are safer. And Pixar, for better or worse, is finally learning that lesson.