Is Cars 3 in the Works at Pixar?

UPDATE – Additional information confirming a Cars 3 release has been added to the bottom of the post.

Since the release of Pixar’s seventh feature film, Cars, back in June 2006, the franchise has only continued to grow in popularity. Spurring the release of the sequel, Cars 2 in June 2011 as well as multiple shorts featuring these beloved characters (Cars Toons and Cars Toons Shorty Shorts).

There have been twelve Cars Toons and three Cars Toons Shorty Shorts released since Cars hit theaters and it’s safe to say more will be on the way. Fans of Cars have been given countless ways to continue to connect with the heartfelt movie, including the amazingly accurate (and insanely popular) Cars Land located in Disney’s California Adventure, it was only a matter of time before we started to hear rumblings and rumors of a possible third installment of Cars. But until the other day, those were only rumblings without a real basis in reality.

In a recent interview with Route 66 News, Michael Wallis, the voice of Sheriff and author of numerous books including Route 66: The Mother Road, may have leaked information regarding this highly rumored sequel. During the interview, he revealed that not only was he excited that Cars 3 was underway, but that the basis for the movie would center back around the mother road – transferring from Route 66 to Route 99. Michael mentions that Route 99 (also known as the Pacific Highway or the Golden State Highway) is the highway that runs through the middle of California.

We’ve taken excerpts from the interview with Michael Wallis and compiled this into four minutes of the most relevant Pixar-related discussions. To listen to the full interview, please visit Route 66 News.

Keep in mind that while we cannot confirm that Pixar is truly working on a third Cars film (as there has been no official announcement), there is some validity in his early knowledge of the film seeing as he was the Route 66 consultant on the original Cars movie. There is also always the possibility that he accidentally misspoke and when he said Cars 3, maybe it will be a new 30-minute special like we just saw with Toy Story of Terror, or maybe it’s a new series of shorts based the Radiator Springs crew visiting route 99. Again, with no official announcement, anything is possible, but we’d tend to believe it’s a third installment in the Cars franchise.

One thing that we can say is that our excitement for another Cars film is through the roof. Yes, some people gave Cars 2 a hard time for straying too far from the peaceful town of Radiator Springs (not us, we loved Cars 2), but we couldn’t be more excited if we could see Sheriff and the gang back on the blacktop. Plus, it would only give us another happy excuse to keep collecting even more Cars die-cast characters!

Finally, you can’t talk about a new Pixar movie without talking about its potential release date. If Cars 3 is in the initial stages of production, when do you think it would hit theaters? We already know of several release dates that don’t have a movie attached to them yet – could this movie fall into the June 16, 2017 slot? What about the November 22, 2017, or June 15, 2018 slots? If we had to guess, based on the timeframe to make these movies, the earliest we’d see Cars 3 would be the June 15, 2018 slot.

So, what do you think? Has Michael Wallis let the “cat out of the bag”…or stated in more automotive terms, has he let the “bearings out of the ball joints”? Let us know your thoughts and initial reactions to this news by leaving a comment below or visiting the Pixar Post Forum and joining in the conversation.

Updated – March 18, 2014 – It was confirmed during the 2014 Disney Annual Shareholder meeting that Pixar was developing a sequel to The Incredibles as well as starting on Cars 3. More details can be found in our updated post.