If I learned anything from my trip to Pixar for Inside Out, it’s that it takes them a long time to develop a project. We’ve known that Brad Bird has been toying with ideas for The Incredibles 2 for quite a while and Disney even confirmed that the film is in development last year, but apparently Bird is first starting to write the script now. Check out what he told NPR (via The Playlist):

“It’s percolating … yeah, I mean, I’m just starting to write it, so we’ll see what happens.”

Clearly there’s not much to go on there, but if Bird is indeed writing a script, that could mean the Pixar team has settled on a story idea. However, based on the typical Pixar timeline Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera revealed while discussing making Inside Out, that doesn’t mean we’ll actually get to see The Incredibles 2 anytime soon. Apparently most Pixar movies take between four and half and six years to make, which breaks down to two and half years of planning, 12 months of animating and seven or eight months of lighting. Let’s say that countdown began for The Incredibles 2 when Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Bird was working on it last year and that means we could see the film at the end of 2018 at the earliest.

Right now Bird is gearing up for the release of Tomorrowland on May 22nd, but other than that, he’s clear to work on The Incredibles sequel. As for Pixar’s line-up, Inside Out is coming on June 19, 2015, The Good Dinosaur is expected to arrive on November 25, 2015, then it’s Finding Dory on June 17, 2016 followed by Toy Story 4 on June 16, 2017. After that, Pixar has two release dates reserved, November 22, 2017 and June 15, 2018. Could one of those go to The Incredibles 2? The November 2017 slot seems a little early, but June 2018 could be a possibility.