Brad Bird Will Not Direct ‘Incredibles 3’

So far just one person has been credited as both the writer and the director Pixar’s Incredibles movies: Brad Bird. And when Pixar first announced they were making Incredibles 3, they also revealed Bird, who’s also known as the director of The Iron Giant, Ratatouille, and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, would return to work on the new sequel.

But Bird will not direct the project. Instead, Peter Sohn, the director of Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur and Elemental will take over for Bird as director of the third Incredibles movie. Bird remains involved as writer and producer.

Sohn’s affiliation with Bird dates all the way back to The Iron Giant, and he’s been involved with Pixar since 2003’s Finding Nemo. After working as a story artist on numerous Pixar projects, he directed 2015’s The Good Dinosaur, followed by 2023’s Elemental.

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The Good Dinosaur is often ranked among the worst Pixar films, and it also remains among the lowest-grossing films in the studio’s history. (Only Lightyear and Onward, which opened right before the Covid pandemic, fared worst in terms of ticket sales.) But Sohn’s Elemental had a very healthy run in theaters, grossing almost half a billion dollars, and was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards.

The Incredibles, about the lives of a family of superheroes, remains one of Pixar’s most successful franchises. The first sequel, 2018’s Incredibles 2, was the top-grossing movie in the studio’s entire history (with $1.24 billion in ticket sales) until Inside Out 2 dethroned it last year with $1.69 billion worldwide. In other words: Expectations for Incredibles 3, both within the company and from audiences, will be extremely high.

Pixar has yet to announce an official release date for Incredibles 3. The company’s latest project, Elio, opens in theaters on June 20.