Toy Story 5
Vibe
Pixar’s fifth installment revisits Woody, Buzz, and the familiar cast as they navigate a changing world where children’s attention is increasingly shaped by technology, challenging the very role toys have long played in a child’s life.
Production notes
Toy Story 5 reunites Andrew Stanton — co-writer of all four previous Toy Story films and director of Finding Nemo, WALL·E, and Finding Dory — with the franchise as director, with co-director McKenna Harris (who had directed the Pixar short Ciao Alberto in 2021). It is Stanton's first feature as director since Finding Dory in 2016, and the first Toy Story film without any involvement from co-creator John Lasseter, who left Pixar in 2018. The script, by Stanton and Harris, addresses what happens to traditional toys in an era when children prefer screen-based devices over physical play objects. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, and the surviving original voice cast return; the film introduces Lilypad, a frog-shaped tablet voiced by Greta Lee, as the technological antagonist. Conan O'Brien joins the cast as the new toy Smarty Pants. Composer Randy Newman returns for his tenth Pixar collaboration. The film is scheduled for release on June 19, 2026.
Trivia
- Toy Story 5 will be the first main Toy Story film without any involvement from co-creator John Lasseter, who left Pixar in November 2018 amid sexual misconduct allegations and has had no involvement with the franchise since.
- Andrew Stanton, the director, had previously voiced Emperor Zurg in Toy Story 2 (1999) — making this Toy Story 5 unique in being the first film in the franchise directed by an actor from a previous installment.
- Composer Randy Newman returns for his tenth Pixar collaboration with Toy Story 5; he has scored every Toy Story film and has been continuously involved in the franchise since 1995, making him among the longest-tenured creative contributors in Pixar history.
- Ernie Hudson takes over as the voice of Combat Carl after Carl Weathers's death in February 2024; Weathers had been the original voice of the character and had also performed it in Toy Story 4 (2019).
- The film's central conflict — toys vs. technology, with Bonnie's tablet 'Lilypad' threatening to displace Woody, Buzz, and Jessie — directly engages contemporary parental anxieties about screen time and digital childhood.
Legacy
Toy Story 5 arrives at the apex of Disney's animated-sequel strategy, in a market reshaped by Inside Out 2's billion-plus-dollar 2024 success and Zootopia 2's record-breaking 2025. Its release on June 19, 2026 will test whether the Toy Story franchise — already 31 years old, with five prior theatrical and short-form releases — retains the cultural pull necessary to compete at billion-dollar scale. Andrew Stanton's return as director after a decade away from Pixar feature work has been positioned by the studio as a return to the franchise's most established creative voice, given his role as co-writer on all four previous Toy Story films. Industry projections place Toy Story 5 in the same tier of expected performance as Inside Out 2 and Frozen 2 — making it potentially Pixar's third billion-dollar theatrical release ever. Beyond the immediate film, Toy Story 5 represents Disney's deliberate decision to keep the franchise actively producing rather than letting Toy Story 4 stand as a closing chapter; its commercial reception will substantially shape Pixar's pipeline for the late 2020s.