'Toy Story 4' Inspiration, The Rock's Secret, and That New Princess: Everything You Need to Know About Disney-Pixar's Upcoming Movies

On Friday afternoon (and into the evening) at Disney’s fan-centric D23 fest, John Lasseter held court, unveiling the slate of animated features coming from Disney and Pixar. Over the course of nearly three hours, a parade of filmmakers and stars presented concept art, test animation, finished clips, and live music from eight different works, including the newest princess film, Moana, and the hugely anticipated sequels Finding Dory and Toy Story 4. Here are the biggest things we learned.

Finding Dory will be huge (and finally make Ellen DeGeneres happy).

‘Finding Dory’ stars Ed O’Neill, Ty Burrell, Ellen DeGeneres (Disney)

“At Pixar, the one question that we keep getting asked most often is ‘will we do a sequel to Finding Nemo?’ And there was one person in particular who’d do most of the asking…” Cue a montage of Ellen DeGeneres, who memorably voiced the absent-minded Dory, repeatedly complaining about the hitherto nonexistent Nemo sequel on her daytime talk show. “OK, OK, OK,” said a mock-exasperated Lasseter. “We’re in production on Finding Dory!” Director Andrew Stanton came out to explain how he was reluctant to revisit Nemo because he felt “the story was a closed circuit, all issues resloved.” But over time, he continued, “I realized one issue remained unaddressed: Dory’s family. Where are they?… Would she be able to find her way home?” The story will pick up about six months after the events of Nemo and send Dory, Marlin, and Nemo across the ocean to Monterey to track down her mom, Jenny (to be voiced by Diane Keaton), and her dad, Charlie (Eugene Levy).

‘Finding Dory,’ due out June 17, 2016 (Disney)

Along the way she encounters several new creatures, including a seven-armed octopus (or, as DeGeneres cracked, a “septopus”) named Hank (voiced by Ed O’Neill), a neurotic beluga whale named Bailey (Ty Burrell), and the whale shark Destiny (Kaitlin Olson). Despite limited visuals (Scranton screened an opening segment that sets up the story, but most of his presentation relied on sketches or him and his fellow filmmakers miming the action), the Finding Dory presentation, which included DeGeneres’s bemused appearance on stage and her “witty banter” with O’Neill, Burrell, and Olson, received the loudest ovation of the day and has all the makings of a sure-fire blockbuster.

Here’s the story behind Toy Story 4.

Humans from left: ‘Toy Story 4’ writers Will McCormack and Rashida Jones; songwriter

Randy Newman; director John Lasseter. The film is due out June 16, 2017 (Disney)

Lasseter acknowledged fan concern that the first three Toy Story movies “were a perfect trilogy.” So, Lasseter continued, “Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, and myself made a pinkie promise that we would not do another Toy Story unless we came up with a story that was worthy to follow Toy Story 3, which was a pretty tall order.” But the quartet kicked around some ideas, Stanton wrote a secret treatment that only he and Lasseter knew about. When it was finished, the rest of the Pixar brain trust read it. “The four of us looked at each other and said, ‘Yes, we believe this is worthy.’” Lasseter said that the main cast of characters, led by Tom Hanks as Woody and Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear, would return, as would composer Randy Newman, who closed the day’s presentation with “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” to a montage of classic Toy Story moments. As for the plot, Lasseter explained that he saw each of the previous Toy Story films as tackling a different genre, and Toy Story 4 would be “something we’ve never done in the Toy Story world, a love story.”

Randy Newman (Disney)

“It is a love story between Woody and Bo Peep [Annie Potts, who was MIA from Toy Story 3]. Bo is returning for Toy Story 4. Woody and Buzz Lightyear head out to find her… It’s a very, very emotional story… and it’s very, very special and it’s a very important story to me. It was inspired by my wife, Nancy.” Aww.

Disney creators really want to make you cry.

It’s hardly revelatory to note that Disney and Pixar movies have plenty of downer moments. Heck, Inside Out was about the symbiotic relationship between Joy and Sadness. Several of the filmmakers acknowledged that to make their movies emotional resonant, they needed to jerk tears from the audience; many of the creators cited Dumbo, with the wrenching separation of mom and child elephant, as an enduring influence. “Our goal is to make you feel emotion,” said Zootopia co-director Rich Moore.

Dwayne Johnson and ‘Moana’ producer Osnat Shurer (Disney)

But the studio racked up an impressive body count during Friday’s presentation. Among the casualties: the beloved grandmother of Moana’s title character (”It is a Disney movie, after all,” joked producer Osnat Shurer), and two dead dads and a dead mom all in this November’s The Last Dinosaur. And those are just the ones we know about. If Finding Dory is anything like Finding Nemo, we’re bound to get misty. And all bets are off when it comes to Coco, which is a movie centered on Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos and promises to show “how families stay woven together across time through the simple act of remembrance.” In other words, bring a hanky.

Music still matters.

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez performing ‘Gigantic’ song. The film will come out in 2018 (Disney)

From the Sherman brothers to Alan Menken-Howard Ashman to Elton John to Randy Newman, Disney has always hired songwriters who elevated their projects — and banked Oscars in the process. On Friday, music played a big part of the presentation. Aside from Newman, Shakira appeared via satellite to play a snippet of her and Sia’s song “Try Everything” from Zootopia. Frozen songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez debuted their new earworm for Gigantic, “I Love My Little Man.” And the Moana segment was capped by a scintillating performance from Opetaia Foa’i and his band Te Vaka (the filmmakers also announced that Moana would feature music from Tony-winning In the Heights composer Lin-Manuel Miranda and Grammy-winning Tarzan composer Mark Mancina).

The Rock (among others) is living the dream.

The Rock gets in the ‘Moana’ mood (Disney)

Easily one of day’s high points was the rollicking appearance by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to tout his supporting role as the demigod Maui in Moana. His energy and enthusiasm were contagious, and he was clearly relishing every moment. (He was second to DeGeneres per our unofficial applause-o-meter.)

“I just shared this with John Lasseter backstage and I wanted to share this with you: 15 years ago, when I got into this business, I had a goal. And my goal was to be in the Disney family. The goal was to be part of a Disney animated movie. For me to be standing here today… thank you so much.”

He wasn’t alone. The unabashed love of Disney was shared by several of the day’s presenters.

Ginnifer Goodwin stars in ‘Zootopia,’ out March 4, 2016 (Disney)

“I’m a Disney addict, a Disney maniac, an obsessive. My illness goes way back,” proclaimed Zootopia star Ginnifer Goodwin, who noted that she just moved into a house formerly owned by the late Disney voiceover artist Sterling Holloway (Winnie-the-Pooh, the Cheshire Cat).

“Ever since I was a little boy, all I ever wanted to do was work for the Walt Disney Animation Studios. I just wanted to be part of the legacy,” said Nathan Greno, director of Gigantic.

“This is a dream come true,” said Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones, who is co-writing Toy Story 4.

Lasseter is sticking to Uncle Walt’s gameplan.

Several times on Friday, Lasseter mentioned the 2006 merger of Disney and Pixar, which placed the Mouse House’s animation studio in Lasseter’s purview. He made no bones about how the move “saved Disney Animation” from both a creative rut and diminshing returns at the box office. And he also stressed how he changed the stagnated culture at the studio. “It meant changing the studio from an executive-driven studio to a filmmaker-driven studio,” he said to applause. “Walt Disney Animation Studios is back.” The slate could have come straight out of Walt’s playbook, with its combination of a talking-animal feature (Zootopia, about comical anthropomorphic critters, including one of the best clips of the day set at a DMV office run in slo-mo by sloths), a “definitive” re-telling of a classic fairy tale (the Jack and the Beanstalk riff Gigantic), and a princess movie (Moana, the story of a South Pacific princess who navigates the wild Pacific Ocean with the help of a tattooed, fishhook-wielding demigod).

First-look image for 2018’s ‘Gigantic’ (Disney)

Lasseter is also trying to strike a balance between sequels (Finding Dory, Toy Story 4, the hilarious new Inside Out-spawned short Riley’s First Date?) and visually arresting originals (The Last Dinosaur, which juxtaposes photorealistic backgrounds with cartoonish creatures; Coco, inspired by Day of the Dead folk art — not unlike last year’s The Book of Life from Fox). “We really have an unbelievable range of movies in production at our studios right now,” said Lasseter. “The stories are dynamic, fresh and so much fun; the characters new and old are so appealing.”