The Toy Story gang were reunited on a hot, humid evening in central London Thursday.
Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack were all in attendance for Toy Story 5‘s U.K. launch event, which even boasted a separate media line for kid interviewers to get their questions to the U.S. A-listers. The grown-up reporters agreed it was a sweet addition to the event.
Newcomer Greta Lee joined too as filmmaker Andrew Stanton prepares to debut another adventure for Woody (Hanks), Jessie (Cusack) and Buzz Lightyear (Allen) in the newest movie, in theaters June 19, which revolves around eight-year-old Bonnie getting her first device and —you guessed it —finding herself notching up far too much screen time, to the horror of her toys.
American royalty Hanks told The Hollywood Reporter that the film features one of the most heartbreaking scenes he’s seen throughout the franchise. “These movies, they end up speaking [to] and puts in words [and] stuff that everybody is thinking anyway,” he said about Disney taking on tech. “There’s one of the most heartbreaking scenes I’ve ever seen in any of the Toy Story movies — when that little girl is getting her feelings hurt by what other people are texting about her, and she doesn’t understand why. She doesn’t know what she did wrong, but it hurts, and that is a very prescient thing to have in a motion picture today about little kids and toys, don’t you think?”
The Oscar-winning star continued, saying there are elements of playing Woody and being a part of the Toy Story franchise that still surprise him. “They always take me to some other emotional place that I’m both happy to [go] and mad that they’re going to make me do this,” he joked. “But Tim and I have done this enough. When I saw the first scene where 500 Buzz Lightyears come up out of the water, I just said, ‘Oh, Tim’s gonna have a field day on this.’ Thank goodness he has to voice 500 of these things, and I don’t.”
Allen, meanwhile, seemed pretty delighted to be showing audiences a new side to Buzz. “There’s a lot of Buzz in this, a lot of different Buzzes. They’ve opened up what he is and what makes him special. I think the word you’re looking for is Space Ranger,” he said, smiling.
The Buzz Lightyear actor concurred with Hanks, revealing that he was impressed Disney and Pixar wanted to take on tech in Toy Story 5: “We’ve dealt with things I couldn’t … I’m really impressed Pixar did this, that they came up with an idea —that they actually do. They’re a tech company. Disney’s a tech company, and they’re attacking their own, looking at themselves and where they fit in. There’s a couple big scenes in this movie that … it got so silent in our preview, and everybody said, ‘This is where we’re heading.’”
The cast of Toy Story 5 —including Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack and Greta Lee —at London’s U.K. launch event.
Courtesy of Getty
He added: “You can’t make people play again, but you can show them that the engagement with toys and engagement with your life and your friends is a little more satisfying than being on your device.”
Director Stanton admitted that he saw the plot for this film take shape long ago. “When they asked me to do the job and I said, ‘Let me write something,’ and I didn’t know what I was going to write, I just said, ‘Let me see if there’s something there.’ One of the first things that came to mind was I knew I wanted it to be about Jessie, I knew that devices were sticking around for years with kids —they weren’t going away after the pandemic, and I knew 50 Buzzes made me laugh. So I started out with those ingredients from the grocery store.”
On whether he already has ideas for Toy Story 6 or Toy Story 7, Stanton responded: “I don’t think so. I put it all on the screen every time I work on any movie, but it always surprises me. I think because of the Toy Story movies, they embrace time. We let life go forward, and so that your life goes forward, and you don’t know what your perspective is going to be four years from now, five years from now, and that’s suddenly material. So, who knows what we’ll feel like four or five years from now?”
Lee quickly stopped by to tease what we can expect from her antagonist, Lily Pad: “Lily, simply put, is a new toy. She’s a device. She’s green. She’s got little arms. She has great intentions but maybe not always the best execution.” As for her favorite Toy Story film: “I’m gonna say [Toy Story] 3. Don’t tell Andrew!”
It rained confetti as the cast gathered for their photo ops, showering the red carpet and its attendees in blue, red and yellow, to match the enormous Toy Story 5 sign.