‘In A Violent Nature’: Director Chris Nash Talks His Buzzy Slasher Hit, Unexpected Inspirations, Extensive Reshoots & More [The Discourse Podcast]

Pixar Reportedly Considering Reboots Including ‘The Incredibles’ & ‘Finding Nemo’

How times change. There once was an era when Pixar just didn’t think it needed sequels and could just go from original story to original story. In fact in 2016, Pixar’s president Jim Morris said there were no Pixar sequel plans after Brad Bird’s “The Incredibles 2,” something of a response to the underwhelming reception to “Cars 2” and to a lesser degree, “Toy Story 3.”

“Most studios jump on doing a sequel as soon as they have a successful film, but our business model is a filmmaker model, and we don’t make a sequel unless the director of the original film has an idea that they like and are willing to go forward on,” Morris said at the time.

While Pixar has certainly tried to stick to that—six of the ten movies they’ve released since the summer of 2016 have been original— since Morris’ remarks, they’ve released “Toy Story 4” (even when they said ‘3’ was the finale), the spin-off “Lightyear,” and this summer’s upcoming “Inside Out 2.”

A “Toy Story 5” is in the works, and now a new report from Bloomberg— discussing many of Pixar’s recent layoffs and woes— says not only are sequels still game, but Pixar is considering rebooting some of its classic films.

According to the Bloomberg piece, “Every hit of yesteryear is being considered for a reboot, with Finding Nemo and The Incredibles regarded as particularly strong candidates for new titles.”

Pixar’s new strategy to turn around their financial problems” involves balancing original movie ideas with sequels and spinoffs, the better to remind audiences what they once loved about Pixar.”

The new aim is apparently to make three new movies every two years, which is historically much less frequent to their usual, one film a year cadence, “with every other title a sequel or spinoff and the rest standalone concepts or potential seeds for new franchises.”

This also sounds a lot like Bob Iger and Disney’s less is more approach and their dialing back at Marvel and Lucasfilm.

On May 21, Pixar announced the company’s largest restructuring, cutting 175 jobs as the studio refocuses on big-screen films instead of Disney+ projects—also not dissimilar to the way Marvel and Lucasfilm are heading, back to the big screen with a deemphasis on Disney+ programming.

It's a sign of the times, unfortunately, and financially they are not great at the moment, a trend that is affecting the entire industry.  Will they follow through? This industry is fickle, so we shall see, but if the box office of 2024 is any indication, these alarming trends may just continue to dominate for the foreseeable future.

In this week’s episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo roams the forest in search of his next victim while discussing “In A Violent Nature.” The movie follows a resurrected killer through the woods as he stalks his victims, all while searching for his stolen necklace. The film is written and directed by Chris Nash and stars Ry Barrett, Josh Lucas, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, and more. 

READ MORE: ‘In a Violent Nature’ Review: Chris Nash’s Debut Heralds a Major New Voice in Horror [Sundance]

During the interview, Chris Nash discusses not only the obvious homages to '80s slashers like “Friday the 13th” but also the less-expected influences that just as heavily influenced the tone and approach to his first feature film.