From the moment Pixar’s Ratatouille hit theaters 19 years ago this month, fans have been asking its lead voice actor, Patton Oswalt, when there will be a follow-up.
“Obviously, I’d love if there was a Ratatouille sequel,” Oswalt, 57, who has just released a new stand-up special, Tea & Scotch, said on Obsessed: The Podcast. But he wants it to be because director Brad Bird gets an idea too good to pass up.
Bird, 68, who not only directed Ratatouille and The Incredibles but also voiced one of Pixar’s most iconic characters, Edna Mode, notably waited 14 years to release a sequel to his blockbuster superhero film The Incredibles.
“There was never gonna be an Incredibles sequel until he thought, ‘Wait a minute. There is a story to tell,’“ Oswalt continued, saying that the new Ratatouille would need to be equally irresistible to Bird. “So if he gets an idea, that’s the one I wanna do.”
In 2019, Bird told the Daily Beast that he only wanted to do the Incredibles sequel if he could be properly “adventurous,” which is how he settled on the “unpredictable” move of having it take place immediately after the events of the first film.
“I thought it was kind of ballsy. And I thought we should be ballsy,” he said.
“I don’t wanna be the guy going, ‘Hey, what if Remy did this? I want it to be one of those ideas that happens that you cannot get away from,” Oswalt added. “I don’t want it to come from us going, ‘All right, let’s get out the legal pads and let’s break down a sequel.’ There are a lot of movies where that’s how they’re done, and it always feels inorganic.”
“I want the sequel to be not the same type of movie, but that same energy that Terminator 2 or Aliens had, which is, there’s an expansion of the story that we that we actually need to tell,“ he said.
Director James Cameron released both the highly successful Terminator 2 and Aliens seven years after the premieres of their respective prequels. Decades later, the Oscar winner would make Avatar and its follow-up, Avatar: The Way of Water, 13 years apart.
”This isn’t just a money grab," Oswalt declared, noting his appreciation for filmmaking that takes time.
The actor jokes, however, that he would never be opposed to a follow-up to the film that earned more than $600 million at the box office.
“And yes, by the way, we love the money, and we’re gonna grab it,” he quipped, adding, “but we’re gonna get the money by telling an amazing story with whole new dimensions that we didn’t even know beforehand.”
Tea & Scotch is streaming on YouTube and GorillaComedy+.
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