Does The ‘Big Hero 6’ End-Credits Scene Set Up A Sequel?

Big Hero 6 – the first Disney animation to feature Marvel superheroes – has been quietly doing big box office business this week, while the world’s media obsesses over live-action releases, such as Interstellar, Dumb And Dumber To and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1. But while everyone is busy drilling holes in the science of Christopher Nolan’s latest opus, and falling at the feet of cinema’s current favourite action heroine – Katniss Everdeen – there has been little attention drawn to the fact that Big Hero 6 contains a tiny secret, just like its Marvel cinematic cousins. It is now almost traditional to sit and wait out the end credits of a Marvel superhero movie, as it is widely known that this is where the seeds of the next franchise instalment are sown. Animation, it seems, is no different, and Big Hero 6 features its own little credit-sequence snippet.

Broadly based on a Marvel comic book of the same name, Big Hero 6 aims to deliver all the thrills and action we’ve come to expect from Marvel, wrapped around the big, warm heart of a classic Disney movie. It is the story of a teenage robotics whizz, who forms a team of superheroes to fight a mysterious villain who is responsible for the death of his older brother.

One of the film’s screenwriters, Robert Baird, explained to the Independent,“It’s inspired by the comic book, but we made it our own. We wanted to make this a Disney superhero movie, so we hope it’s uniquely that. We think there’s no other studio that could have put out this particular superhero movie.”

While Big Hero 6 has certainly been well received by critics and audiences alike (although, somewhat bizarrely, it doesn’t reach the UK until the end of January), it is not entirely unique. It is still a Marvel/Disney superhero movie – as the sequel seed-sowing scene demonstrates. The clip (brace for spoilers) revolves around T.J. Miller’s character, Fred, making a discovery in his home.

Co-director Don Hall explained, “The writers, Dan Gerson and Rob Baird, came to us one day with a pitch about ‘Hey, what if Fred was rich, but nobody knew it?’ You know, he comes off as this kind of slacker dude and his underwear thing and all that. He’s kind of this gross guy, but appealing. What if we found out he was super, super rich? We all thought that was a super funny idea. Then it felt like, ‘Oh, what if…’ and then we started from that. It’s like, ‘What if his Dad closely resembled Stan Lee?’ It felt like we could kind of weave that in there, and get a little humour – a little wink to Stan Lee – out of that.”

So, are we expecting a sequel? Nothing is officially confirmed, but chances are high, given the studio behind the film, and the very open-ended additional scene. It all depends on the numbers, of course, but with a solid US opening of $56 million, and a slow international roll-out planned for the next two months, the odds are certainly stacked in favour of Big Hero 6 as a potential new franchise.

[Image via Google]