While the current (and much deserved) hype for the best animated movie of 2018 is focused on Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, it's worth reminding folks that the excellent and long-awaited Incredibles 2 had a very impressive run last year. It's a box office bronze medal winner on the domestic stage, behind only Disney/Marvel's Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War, and took the fourth spot at the worldwide box office behind Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. On the critical side of things, it has a 94% rating from professional reviewers matched pretty closely with the audience's 86% favorable rating. As we're smack in the middle of awards season, don't sleep on Incredibles 2.
Following up on the success of the superhero family film, you might think writer-director Brad Bird would take it easy for a while and recharge the creative batteries. Not the case, it seems. In an interview with Variety during the BAFTA Tea Party, Bird confirmed that he is indeed working on a new project, revealed that it's a musical, and even namedropped frequent collaborator and Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino who will be handling the music on the project. Consider us intrigued.
Here's what Bird had to say during the brief interview:
“I'm trying to work on my next thing. It's a musical, actually. I don’t know anything about musicals, so I figure I should do this because I’m deathly afraid of it and that sounds like a cool thing... It's a project I've been wanting to make a long time. It's got about 20 minutes of animation in it.”
Bird confirmed that it's an original project, so don't expect another go-round with Mary Poppins or anything in the world of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Sometimes, after heading up a years-in-the-making feature film that had the size and scope of something like Incredibles 2, auteurs will attempt to tackle a smaller, more daring, and often offbeat project that lets them flex some creative muscles without worrying quite as much about the commercial success of the thing. Stay tuned for more on this project as we hear it!
