Inside Out 2 continues to be the #1 movie in the world, thanks to a second-weekend performance of over $100 million at the domestic box office, the highest sophomore outing for an animated film. This skyrockets the Disney hit into an estimated $720 million, becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year and possibly the first billion-dollar hit of 2024!
For such a strong performance, it is abundantly clear that fans are clamoring to explore more of the world of Inside Out. So much so that weeks before the movie’s release, Disney started development for a new Disney+ series projected to premiere in 2025, entitled Dream Productions.
The spin-off series will likely explore the dream studio responsible for Riley’s dreams. It marks the first time Pixar will produce a full-fledged animated series, along with the upcoming baseball-centered series Win or Lose premiering this year.
In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Pete Docter, the Chief Creative Officer at Pixar Animation Studios and director of the first Inside Out, shared details of the spinoff and its setting, “In the first film, remember we go to Dream Production to see how Riley’s dreams are made? It semi-explains why they’re so weird.”
As for the release date, Docter revealed, “We have finished. It’s coming out next spring. I’m not sure that there’s been a specific release date. We’ve continued the exploration of the power of dreams and how they affect us in our waking life, as well. So it’s pretty cool.”
The first step into Dream Productions
As fans may recall, Dream Productions was first introduced when Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong found themselves stranded from the Train of Thought after Riley fell asleep and finding ways to wake her up and power the locomotive back to Headquarters.
Inside Out featured Dream Productions as an archetypal Hollywood movie and TV studio behind Riley’s vibrant dreams, as well as surreal elements (like a talking dead rat and a bear serving broccoli pizza, both from a previous dream).
Seeing it as the quickest way to wake Riley up, Joy and Sadness infiltrated a production of Riley’s dream of her first day in class, only for their plan to be disrupted and for Bing Bong to be locked up. It only took drastic measures to free Bing Bong and to truly cause Riley to wake up – Jangles the giant birthday party clown, who nearly ruined Dream Productions.
The very idea of Dream Productions
The first Inside Out likened the creation of dreams to production of TV sketches. Thus, the sequence in Dream Productions pretty much resembles a typical Saturday Night Live-like process, complete with cameras, cast members and cue cards.
To help realize the idea, the staff spent a week on the show, learning the behind-the-scenes process of producing an SNL episode. It helped that Bill Hader, the former voice of Fear, was instrumental in the team gaining access to the iconic sketch show and learning about live TV production.
Jonas Rivera, the producer of the first Inside Out, revealed the importance of SNL in a 2015 Slash Film interview:
“There was a little bit of ‘We're fans of anything that's show business’. And Bill tied it to Dream Productions, which is true. We wanted to see how that worked. But the other thing is we wanted to get was the sense of spontaneity. I mean, animation is so glacially done and slow. And you have to really engineer anything spontaneous. It's a myth of spontaneity. Going to Saturday Night Live, I think, really helped fuel that. Where you see they sit down with a blank slate on, you know, Monday or whatever and then Saturday night there's a show.”
That element of spontaneity will become critical in pulling off the resulting spin-off show if it does mimic the snappy workflow and elaborate machinations of SNL. Yet, given the benchmarks pushed by the hitmaking Pixar sequel, the possibilities are endless to visualize Riley’s dreams. And possibly, there might be more worlds to visit within her expanding mind.