Toy Story was the first Pixar movie. Now that the studio is often considered a guaranteed hitmaker, they are revisiting their earliest characters from the perspective of 10 hits, several Oscar winners later and hundreds of favorite characters later.

“The interesting thing is that when the movie comes out, it will have been 11 years,” said director Lee Unkrich. “A lot of us have not only been at Pixar for those 11 years, but we’ve been there much longer, because we’ve been there since the first Toy Story or even before, and we’ve lived a lot of life in this time. A lot of us have gotten married, we’ve got kids, our kids have been growing up. I remember when we were making Bug’s Life, John Lasseter used to his kids come in and crawl under his lap, and they were really little guys. Now one by one, he’s sending them off to college.”

Similarly, Toy Story 3 features Andy, the owner of Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear, going to college. The toys have been mentally preparing themselves since they learned about toy abandonment in Toy Story 2, but how will they really deal with it when reality hits?

“I hope you’re surprised by everything in the film,” Unkrich said. “We’ve been working with these characters for so long in our lives for the last 15 years, we feel like we know them. Hopefully the fact that 11 years have passed since the last film says that we weren’t just rushing this out to make some quick cash. We were only making this now because we thought we had stumbled upon a good story to tell, and we wanted it to be as emotionally rich as possible.”

What those emotional issues are is still a surprise, but remember how Jessie’s song made you cry. “That’s territory I can't go into yet. I mean, I feel odd doing press this early for the film but we’ve revealed so little about the story and the plot. I mean, we keep it that way for now, just so that it’s exciting for people. Even on a thematic level, I don't know if we want to go there. Hopefully just by nature, the point that we’re setting the story at, you can fill in some of the gaps there.”

At San Diego Comic Con, Unkrich announced a new character joining the toy chest. Michael Keaton will provide the voice of a Ken doll, but that’s not all. “We have a lot of new characters. We haven't announced many of then. Ken is a new character, of course, we announced today but all of the main characters are back from the other movie, and we’ve added into that mix quite a few new characters.”

"Toy Story 3" opens June 18, 2010.


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Story/Interview by Fred Topel

Starpulse contributing writer

(Starpulse in Hollywood): Every week, Hollywood's biggest stars are meeting in the hot spots and Starpulse is there.