Elemental director Peter Sohn is to take over from regular director Brad Bird on Pixar’s forthcoming superhero sequel, Incredibles 3.
Since the series began in 2004, The Incredibles franchise has reflected the tastes and storytelling style of its writer and director, Brad Bird. For Incredibles 3, however, Bird is handing directorial duties over to another Pixar filmmaker – Peter Sohn, director of Elemental and The Good Dinosaur.
Little is known about the animated superhero sequel at this stage; it was announced in August 2024, and Pixar doesn’t exactly churn these movies out – there was a 14 year gap between The Incredibles and 2018’s The Incredibles 2, which almost doubled the box office of its predecessor with a take of over $1.2bn. Pixar’s renewed emphasis on making follow-ups to its most popular franchises likely means that Incredibles 3 will be turned around far more quickly, however.
Although Bird has still been overseeing Incredibles 3′s development and writing the script, he’s been busy making Ray Gunn – a noir-ish sci-fi passion project he’s directing for Skydance Animation and Netflix. As a result, he’s hand picked Sohn to take over as director according to The Hollywood Reporter.
It’s easy to see why Sohn got the gig. Aside from his more recent work as a director, Sohn’s history with Brad Bird stretches back long before either of them landed at Pixar. Sohn was an animator on Brad Bird’s hand-drawn classic The Iron Giant, released by Warner Bros in 1999. Sohn then wore multiple hats on The Incredibles (he was an animator, story artist and made a voice cameo as a mugger) and was on the creative team for Incredibles 2.
Read more: Elemental review | A sweet story from Pixar
After working his way up through the ranks at Pixar on such films as Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and Up, Sohn made his debut as director with 2015’s The Good Dinosaur – a somewhat troubled production subjected to several delays and changes in its creative line-up. Sohn returned with Elemental in 2023 – a charming romance that was inspired by the filmmaker’s own thoughts and experiences as an immigrant growing up in New York City that turned out to be a bit of a sleeper hit for the animation studio.
As Sohn told this writer in 2015, watching movies helped him as the young son of Korean migrants – they became his way of understanding the world. And, in time, inspired him to become a filmmaker himself.
“I’m a film lover,” Sohn said. “It’s what I connected to. In New York, I grew up feeling like, ‘I’m yellow, you’re white, you’re black, you’re brown, that’s who I am.’ But when I got to art school, it was like, ‘Hey! You liked Akira? Holy cow!’ Whatever race you are, hey, let’s talk about the headlights or the crazy multi-plane stuff. ‘Oh, you liked Forrest Grump? That CG was really immersive, like, you couldn’t even tell.’ Those were the film lovers. That’s when I began really learning about animation as the observation of life as storytelling. Whatever confidence has grown, it really has to do with being among my people. ‘Yeah, we can sit and talk about movies forever!'”
More on Incredibles 3 as we get it.
