Disney has heavily teased the involvement of pop superstar Taylor Swift in Toy Story 5 — while also acknowledging the rumors with a coy response.
Fans first linked Taylor Swift to Pixar's upcoming animated blockbuster a month ago, when a mysterious countdown teaser appeared for a few minutes on the popstar's website, before swiftly being deleted. The teaser featured Toy Story's iconic blue background and white clouds — the wallpaper in Andy's bedroom — with yellow and blue text similar to Toy Story's logo.
At the time, Swift's rabid fanbase then noticed several apparent Toy Story nods in the music video for her recent track Opalite, and realized that the film will arrive on June 19, the 20-year anniversary of her debut single. These loose threads were hardly conclusive, but the idea that she was involved in the film has persisted.
Now, the situation has escalated significantly, with enormous Toy Story 5 billboards appearing across the US in numerous cities that simply display the letters: "TS". Disney and Pixar social media accounts have then been sharing images of the billboards online, with one telling post by Pixar's Twitter/X account even including the Taylor Swift lyric "She's making those moves up as she goes!" as a caption.
Taylor Swift fans are known for spotting hidden references and Easter eggs in the artist's lyrics, music videos and concert performances. Disney appears to be leaning into this brilliantly, with further hints now popping up across social media.
These include animated Toy Story-like clouds appearing when you search "Taylor Swift" on TikTok, the capitalization of the letters T and S in lyrics on Apple Music for Taylor Swift songs released as an album's track 5, an update to Apple Music's Taylor Swift Essentials playlist so it only includes track 5s, and a change to Taylor Swift's fifth album cover art to feature Toy Story-like clouds.
Last week, Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton addressed the Taylor Swift speculation head-on, and offered a carefully worded denial.
"It surprised us," Stanton said in an interview with YouTuber Shivani Khosla. "What a freakin' honor... The sad truth is we watched the movie being mixed last week and the song on the end was not Taylor Swift."
Throughout all this, it's unclear exactly what Swift's involvement might be. Is she voicing a character, or providing a song on the soundtrack (that's not the credits song), or potentially both?
Toy Story 5 launches in theaters on June 19, though it's likely we won't have to wait that long to find out what exactly is going on.
Image credit: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
source https://www.ign.com/articles/toy-story-5-taylor-swift-teases-appear-in-cities-nationwide-and-online-as-pixar-offers-coy-response