Toy Story 5 is just less than a year away, and Tim Allen has confirmed who will be the primary focus for the upcoming installment. The film was first announced in 2023 during Disney‘s Q1 earnings call, and a short preview and details for the feature were showcased at the 2025 Annecy Animation Festival. Now, this latest plot reveal gives a clearer glimpse of what the fifth Toy Story title will be about.
In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, the voice actor behind Buzz Lightyear revealed that Toy Story 5 will focus on Jessie, voiced by Joan Cusack. To recap, at the end of Toy Story 4, Woody (Tom Hanks) gave the sheriff’s badge to Jessie before he parted ways with his friends to join Bo, thus passing the torch for her to become the leader. Based on this latest plot detail, it seems Jessie will need help in her new role, but it hasn’t yet been revealed how Woody will return, since he was last seen at the traveling carnival with Bo and the lost toys. Allen said:
“They reboot everything. It’s all about Jessie, which is really cool. She’s in trouble, and she needs help. We’re all over, so she has to gather everybody.”
The general plot of Toy Story 5 follows the toys as they face a new challenge: electronics, and risk being replaced. There are preview images of the upcoming feature showing Bonnie under the sheets with a tablet called a LilyPad. Both the toys and the LilyPad will be at odds in the upcoming feature as both have “very different opinions on what Bonnie needs” as Bonnie grows older.
Tim Allen Expands on ‘Toy Story 5’ Opening Scene
The opening scene for Toy Story 5 premiered at Annecy 2025, featuring multiple Buzz Lightyear toys camping on a beach after being stranded on an island. Allen elaborated on that scene on Jimmy Kimmel, revealing that it was a plane crash and that the “hundreds” of Buzz Lightyear toys stranded have to find their way back. He also shares that there will be more dialogue, like antics about who’s going to be the leader, and that he voiced all those Buzz figures.
“I [don’t know] how much I can tell you. The funniest thing to me is that there’s a plane crash like that [Tom] Hanks’ movie. I don’t know. Tom somebody on the island. We’re [in] a a FedEx plane [when] a hundred Buzz dolls lands, and they’re all lost. They’re hysterical. They’re trying to find their way back, and there are a hundred of them. I hope they have it in there. I adlib, there’s two in the back that are going, ‘Why is he giving all the orders?’ Because there are hundreds of them, like, ‘We go this way. Space Rangers right,’ and there’s one at the front.”
Toy Story 5 is scheduled to hit theaters on June 19, 2026.
via Collider