Studios can promise you the end of a franchise, but when a a film makes more than $1.6 billion, they’re going to rethink it. Tom Hanks, the voice of the Toy Story‘s beloved Woody, just told the BBC that Toy Story 4 is happening. During the premiere of his newest movie Larry Crowne, Hanks also told “Showbiz Tonight” that he believes another Woody and Buzz Lightyear movie is underway (via The Marquee Blog).

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Cars 2 may be Pixar’s first critical failure, but after a huge opening weekend, the sequel proved to be another financial success for the beloved studio. Five years ago, Cars ranked No. 1 with $60.1 million. This weekend, Cars 2 surpassed its predecessor with $68 million. A film that took us by surprise was the new Cameron Diaz‘s comedy Bad Teacher, which made a hefty debut of $31 million. Sadly, the huge superhero/comic movie Green Lantern dropped to No. 3 with a weak weekend gross of $18.3 million. Check out the numbers.

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I’m often inclined to give family movies a pass (as evidenced by my favorable review of Mr. Popper’s Penguins), if only because sometimes you’ve got to drag the family to a movie theater just to get them all to shut up for 2 hours.  Don’t worry, I sympathize here for you.  If you needed this critic’s permission to pack up the family and go to the multiplex, here it is:  Cars 2 is the ticket to buy this weekend.  It’s a big, colorful, noisy spectacle that will please broad audiences looking for a good time, especially small children.

But this is a Pixar film!  They’ve made some of the most emotionally resonant films of the last decade!  It’s impossible not to compare Cars 2 to the rest of their catalogue, and as soon as you begin to, it breaks down.  Read the rest of the review (and more car puns!), after the jump…

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Disney and Pixar have really revved up the publicity for this week’s release of Cars 2!  Did you see what I did back there, by the way?  That was a hilarious car pun.  Listen, I’m just trying to appeal to the Cars crowd here.  It seemed to work for those studios, at least.  Do you have any idea how popular this franchise is?!  $2 Billion dollars a year in merchandise and licensing!  I’m just trying to follow the formula here.  Anyway, director John Lasseter (pictured above) gathered with the film’s stars, Michael Caine, Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Emily Mortimer, and Eddie Izzard, to discuss the new film with members of the press.  Check out some highlights of what was said, after the jump…

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There’s been a slow trickle of news from CinemaCon, with most of it teaser posters for films from later this year. The biggest bit so far is the official title for the Pixar sequel to Monsters Inc. That title: Monsters University. This also fits with previous information this might be a prequel. Though nothing has been confirmed, the likelihood of John Goodman and Billy Crystal reprising their roles is all but assured (who would say no to Pixar?)

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Well, this could get interesting—turns out that a U.K. screenwriter, Jake Mandeville-Anthony, is suing Disney and Pixar for allegedly basing Cars and its upcoming sequel, the cleverly-titled Cars 2, on his original scripts that were written and submitted in the 1990s.  Reminds me of the time Michael Bay totally swiped my original filmscript, A Bunch of Lights Flash Before Some Noises Go Off and Then a Hot Chick Does Something Hot Chick-ish Near a Sports Car and Then End Credits, and turned it into a career-long series of adaptations.  Not cool, Bay!

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Disney and Pixar have released two new photos from their upcoming sequel Cars 2. The film is a follow up to the 2006 hit starring Owen Wilson. Today we have a couple of beautiful specimens to showcase in the form of a blue muscle car and a sneaky spy jet. Out of the two, we personally love the car but which one is your favorite? Take a look…

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Fans of the superhero family feature The Incredibles are in luck, the movie is finally headed to Blu-ray. Some of you probably weren’t aware that the film wasn’t available in the HD format, but it will be next spring according to The Pixar Blog. When you buy Toy Story 3 on Blu-ray you will get a big surprise that tells you all about the studio’s plans for the revamped film.

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Over the past decade Pixar has produced some of the most acclaimed animated films to ever hit the screen. Their latest release Toy Story 3 became the highest grossing film for the studio, the highest grossing animated film of all time, and the second film this year to earn over 1 billion dollars for Disney. It’s no secret that the studio holds itself to a high standard, so when they have an idea that doesn’t make the grade, they put it out to pasture.

One of those discarded projects was Newt, a story that centered on two creatures who hate each other’s guts but eventually fall in love. There’s nothing original there, so who’s really surprised that it got canned? Here’s what Newt would have looked like had it gone into production…

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