Director Brad Bird is poised to make his live-action debut with this fall’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and for those of you lost as to why so many people are excited about that prospect, it has a little something to do with Bird’s oeuvre. The director’s animated filmography includes outstanding works such as The Iron Giant, Ratatouille, and of course The Incredibles. The latter has drawn quite a bit of sequel chatter over time, as it’s generally regarded as one of the best films to come out of Pixar (and that’s saying something). We recently got the chance to talk to Bird and he revealed that he’s not at all opposed to making an Incredibles follow-up, and talked about what it would take to make the sequel happen. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

Bird revealed to us that he definitely hasn’t ruled out returning to the Incredibles universe, and he even has some ideas:

“I can’t say I’m actively working on it, but I have some ideas and if I ever get it all together into a story that is at least as good as the one we did, I’d be happy to return to that world. I love working with Pixar.”

The director elaborated on the ideas that he’s been thinking up in an interview with Movies.com, saying that he’s come up with some great little ideas but he’s far from an overall arc:

“I would like to think that I have several good ideas that could be incorporated into a next Incredibles, but I don’t have a whole movie yet, and the last thing I want to do is do it just because it would open big, or something like that.”

With Pixar’s recent slate of films featuring sequels to Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Cars, it’s a bit surprising that a sequel to The Incredibles isn’t at least in the development stage. Well, there’s a good reason for that. Work hasn’t begun on a sequel because Pixar feels the same way about the film that Bird does; he wants to be the one doing it:

“I think the reason it hasn’t [happened] yet is because the studio would like me to do it, if there were another Incredibles, and I’ve told them that I’m not really friendly to have someone else take away my child.”

It’s definitely reassuring to know that if we ever do get an Incredibles 2, it will come courtesy of Bird himself. The director went on to elaborate on what he told us about his hesitations in making the sequel, as he looks to Toy Story 2 as the benchmark for follow-ups:

“Toy Story 2 was, to me, a perfect sequel, because it absolutely respected the first film but found new places to go without selling out its characters. So if I could come up with an idea that is to Incredibles that Toy Story 2 is to Toy Story, I would do it in a second.”

Hopefully Bird gets around to working on the sequel sometime down the road. At this point, I’m just glad we have someone so talented making movies at all, and I’ll anxiously be awaiting any project that he attaches his name to.