Ratatouille director Brad Bird shuts down sequel speculation

Ratatouille director Brad Bird has no intention of making a sequel to his Oscar-winning animation.

Bird, who wrote and directed the 2007 Pixar movie, revealed to Collider that studio executives have approached him about making a sequel and he always shuts down the idea because he's content with where Remy the rat's story ended.

"They've made little feints towards that to see how I would react. They'll, like, crack a joke, but the joke will be a little bit serious, like, 'Would you?' And I'm like, 'No, we told that story,'" he told the outlet.

Bird noted that studio executives have floated the idea of sequels to all of his animated movies, including 1999's The Iron Giant.

"Any time you do something that ends up connecting with people, they automatically think, 'How about another?'" he continued. "People have mentioned it about The Iron Giant, which is hilarious to me because the film didn't succeed at all in its initial release. It's caught up in time, but what would you do to follow that up? He's lumbering around, still undiscovered? In other words, to me, that story is told."

However, he acknowledged that he can see The Incredibles story continuing beyond the upcoming third instalment. He wrote and directed the 2004 original and its 2018 follow-up, and is a writer and executive producer on Incredibles 3.

Ratatouille, which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar, follows a rat named Remy who teams up with a young kitchen worker to achieve his dream of cooking at a famous Paris restaurant.

Patton Oswalt, the voice of Remy, said on The Daily Beast's Obsessed podcast last week that he would only return for a follow-up if Bird came to him with a good story idea.

"Obviously, I'd love if there was a Ratatouille sequel," Oswalt shared. "There was never gonna be an Incredibles sequel until he thought, 'Wait a minute. There is a story to tell.' So if he gets an idea, that's the one I wanna do."