Incredibles 3 is officially on the calendar for June 16, 2028. By the time it lands in theaters, it’ll be a full 22 years since the Parr family first hit the big screen in 2004!
But don't expect the supers to show up with graying hair, at least if original director Brad Bird has his way, as he isn't a fan of aging the characters up just to match the expectactions of the original fan base that are now adults.
Those kids who first watched the film when it was originally released have grown up since 2004 but Bird doesn't think that's a valid reason to age up the characters.
Speaking to The Direct, Bird replied to a question about if he thinks Dash, Violet and Jack-Jack should be aged up in the third outing and remarked, "If you lose that, you lose the archetypical aspect of it and that's something that is important to me. In other words... They were meant to represent parts of life that you go through."
He continued, "So, everyone has been a baby, and they know what babies are. Babies are... who knows what they are, right? They might be amazing. They might be the next bum on the corner. You don't know. Babies are an unknown. They might have all the powers. They might have none of the powers. You don't know...Teenagers are insecure. They want to be invisible. 'Don't look at me. Don't look at me. I'm not feeling comfortable. I'm defensive. I've got force fields...' Moms are pulled 10 different directions at once, like taffy, so it makes her elastic. Dads are expected to be strong, you know."
Closing out his thoughts, Bird stated, "And so, those are family archetypes, and aging them up doesn't help that at all. [...] People just keep thinking that aging them up is going to make them somehow hipper or cooler, or more like them, and it's like no, it won't."
Of course, that might not entirely be Bird's decision anymore.
While he’s co-writing the script alongside his protégé, Elemental director Peter Sohn, Bird has since left Pixar for Skydance Animation.
Just how much pull he'll actually have on the final film from outside the studio walls remains to be seen. So just because Bird says the characters shouldn't be aged up, don't take that as gospel.
Earlier this year, Sohn stated, "It really has been full circle for me. It's about getting to work with Brad again. Brad gave me my first job on Iron Giant. It's so much about the worlds and the characters that we're creating versus just storyboards or designs. It's about getting to understand those characters in a deeper way that I never thought I would. It's a great honor and I feel lucky as $h#* to be working with him on it."
Sohn then admitted that he and Bird don't always see eye-to-eye on where to take the threequel. "Yeah, there's a lot of heavy debates on different ideas and different directions to go. You want to put your all into it and you want to make it as great as possible [and] that's something I love about working with Brad. He just put that bar as high as he could and now as a director, I'm doing the same kind of thing, of just 'lets get the bar as high as we can and reach for it.'"
No plot details for Incredibles 3 have been revealed so far but the core voice cast from the first two film, Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson; are all expected to return.