The good people at Pixar are notoriously careful about revealing anything about their upcoming projects until they’re good and ready. There’s a life-size statue of Sulley at the company’s campus entrance that comes alive at night to scare off spies (and motivate animators working into the wee hours on the latest film). But, just occasionally, they do deign to release some information, and the latest news concerns Sulley himself. The planned sequel to Monsters, Inc is, as previously rumoured, actually a prequel called Monsters University.
“The film is a prequel that tells you a little bit about how Mike and Sulley first met, attending Monsters University,” Disney’s Dave Hollis told cinema chain owners gathered in Las Vegas for the annual CinemaCon convention, where Entertainment Weekly was in the audience. “Obviously everybody knows at this point Mike and Sulley are amazing friends — the best of friends — but as it turns out, in this story, that wasn’t always the case. From the moment they met at university, they could not stand each other. This story takes you through the ups and downs, and how they overcame their own differences.”
Billy Crystal and John Goodman are returning to voice duties for the central pair, and turning back the clock to the their early days certainly opens up a whole lot of new opportunities (including the return of Steve Buscemi’s villainous reptile Randall). It must be said, though, that we’ll be a little sad not to see what Boo is up to these days (unless, that is, they include some bookend sections set in current day Monstropolis.)
There's no exact release date yet, but it should be out sometime in November 2012.