Lightyear was released to mostly positive reviews last year (it has a respectable 74% on Rotten Tomatoes), but still ended up being far from the critical darling most Pixar movies are.
More importantly, it made only $226 million at the worldwide box office on a $200 million budget. A rare flop for the studio, plenty of pundits have since questioned what went wrong with the movie. The sci-fi tale followed the "real" Buzz Lightyear with Captain America star Chris Evans lending his voice to the Space Ranger in place of Tim Allen.
It was supposed to be the movie that a young Andy watched before getting a Buzz action figure for his birthday, an idea that served as an undeniably clever way to expand the Toy Story franchise beyond, well, toys. However, it appears that isn't what most fans want from the franchise.
James Brolin lent his voice to Zurg in the movie (which revealed that he was, in fact, a much older Buzz), and recently talked to Screen Rant about what he thinks went wrong with Lightyear.
"I don't know if I'm going to be back to that franchise," the actor admitted. "It's too bad that movie didn't [do well], it was so grown up, it wasn't a Toy Story for kids, really. So, will there be more, will I be back? I don't know. Will I ever do any vocal stuff again? Who knows."
Given the way Zurg's story ended, we wouldn't anticipate Brolin returning for a Lightyear sequel even if there was a chance one might happen. As things stand, the movie lost upwards of $100 million, so the odds of Disney and Pixar revisiting this well are slim unless they have something planned for Disney+.
We can probably forget about seeing any further Toy Story spin-offs in this vein, but a fifth instalment of that franchise is on the way.
That doesn't currently have a release date so keep checking back here for updates.