By James White | Posted 18 Jun 2019

All through the press tour for 2010's Toy Story 3, the Pixar team were adamant that this was the end, with no plans for further movies. You'd be forgiven for thinking then, since a fourth film arrives in cinemas this weekend, that the smell of pants on fire was permeating the Emeryville studio campus, especially when you learn that Andrew Stanton, one of the driving forces behind all the movies featuring Woody, Buzz and co., was already working on an idea for it while the third film was being finished.

Talking with Coming Soon, Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley and producer Jonas Rivera explained that Stanton had kicked off work because he got the spark of where the story could go. "Andrew Stanton one of the writers, who’s written on all the Toy Story films, one of the godfathers of Toy Story, he actually started the outline for number 4 while 3 was still finishing," Cooley said. "But he kept it secret. We didn’t know, I’m speaking for all of us."

Though the reaction within the studio itself was similar to the wider world's feelings of "why?" after the success of the third, Stanton reportedly held his ground, arguing that there was still territory to cover in Woody's story. "That started to light us up a little bit, and slowly, we started to crack that open and go, 'What would happen if Woody did everything right, he survived it all, he landed on his feet with Bonnie?'" says Rivera. "And what we realized in that discussion was the end of 3 is really the end of Andy’s story, but the story of Toy Story is Woody... Now that I’m saying it, I’m realizing Andrew’s kids had gone off to college and moved out. So there’s definitely some of that in there. Like, what do you do when you’ve done everything right and your life’s not over? You have to reinvent yourself. And that was kind of the crack in the nerve, like okay, how would Woody do that? That was interesting to us."

With the return of Bo peep as one crux of the story, the idea of Woody finding a new path thanks to her influence helped drive the development of the fourth movie. "It was interesting," adds fellow producer Mark Nielsen. "We know this character. What would he do in this new situation? So we just kept going down these different paths, and just a random thing of coming up with Forky. And then we were like, 'Well, actually, Forky forces him to explain what it means to be a toy.' And so, all of these things just started to kind of fall in line very slowly over time. And just speaking about that part of Woody on the road with Forky talking about basically what it means to not have your kid living at home anymore. When Andrew wrote that, I read it and was crying because it was just so awesomely written. And I even told him like, 'Nobody else could write this. You’ve experienced this and I could feel it on the page there.'"

For more from the team, head to Coming Soon's site. Toy Story 4 hits UK cinemas on Friday and you can find our review here.

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