Pixar

Inside Out’s Trailer Didn’t Impress Me

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So, the first full trailer (following the teaser from a couple months ago that was almost entirely clips from prior Pixar films) for Pixar’s next film showed up today. I’d been cautiously optimistic about this one, hoping for a change from the past, but after watching the trailer…I have concerns.

On the pro side, the main character is a little girl, something that’s been lacking in Pixar films until now, and the general concept looks like a very interesting one.

However, some things jumped out at me.

Stereotypes: Mom is caring, nurturing and interested in her daughter’s day, while dad is absentmindedly dreaming about sports and has to be prompted to show interest in his daughter. When prompted to actually interact with his family, his first thoughts are right in line with very typical male stereotypes: my wife wants my attention, so I must be in trouble; did I forget the garbage or leave the toilet seat up?

This leads directly to what to me is problematic language: “What is it, woman?!” Just…ugh.

Odd choices: When the promo material released so far highlighted the emotion characters inside the girl’s head, there was a nice 3-to-2 mix of feminine to masculine characters. However, all of the mom’s emotion characters are definitely feminine, and the dad’s are definitely all masculinized (with pornstaches, no less). Why do their characters get uniformly gendered while the girl’s are a mix? I suppose it could be commentary on gender being still somewhat unformed in a pre-pubescent child and settling later in life, but that seems a bit much to expect of a Pixar film.

I had hopes, Pixar, and they weren’t even that high. And yet, I don’t think you’re living up to them.

Back to the Boys Club

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Long-time readers will know of my concerns regarding Pixar’s long-running marginalization of women in their films (Is Pixar a “Boys Only” Club?, Rataphooey, Misogyn•E, More on Pixar (Or, Why I Suck at Soundbites), Pixar and Gender, and Things That Bugged Me About Up).

Even given all of that, I’ve been cautiously optimistic about Pixar’s next film, Brave, for some time now. It looked like Pixar was finally cracking the clubhouse door open. Not only is the main character a girl, but the film was being written and directed by Brenda Chapman — the first time a Pixar film has had a woman directing — and she had written the film with her daughter in mind. No guarantees, but all promising signs.

Unfortunately, the rumor mill of the past few days seems to be indicating that not only is Brenda Chapman no longer directing Brave, but she has left Pixar entirely.

Crazy rumors floating into our offices this afternoon from reliable sources. We hear that Brenda Chapman, the first woman director at Pixar, has left the studio and is no longer directing Brave (previously titled The Bear and the Bow). We hear that she was pushed aside from full directing a while back, and that story artist Mark Andrews (who also co-directed the Pixar short “One Man Band”) has taken over directorial duties.

Disturbing to hear, and I’m very curious as to what happened to prompt this move. Obviously, there are a number of possible reasons, many of which will likely have little to nothing to do with any real or perceived sexism. Also, it’s entirely possible that Pixar may still be able to release a good, quality film with a strong female lead character, and I certainly hope that they do, no matter who ends up directing Brave. That said, losing (dismissing? firing?) their first woman director doesn’t bode well for finally losing the “boys club” impression.

Things That Bugged Me About ‘Up’

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To start with, a list of things that I liked about Pixar‘s Up:

  • The animation, as always in a Pixar film, was gorgeous.
  • The opening ten minutes or so were some of the sweetest, saddest, and most touching work I’ve seen Pixar do since Jesse’s song (“When She Loved Me“) in Toy Story 2. Yes, I got sniffly.
  • There were a number of funny bits that got laughs out of me.

But, as I tweeted yesterday, I didn’t end up liking the film as a whole very much. What a tragic, depressing film.

  • Lesson number one: heroes will let you down. After spending his life idolizing the explorer, Carl finds him only to discover that he’s a greedy, obsessed murderous bastard with no redeeming qualities at all. Russell obviously idolized his father, and yet the failure of his father was a recurring theme, which ties right into…

  • Lesson number two: fathers also let you down. All we know about Russell’s father is that he’s been increasingly distant, to the point of being essentially nonexistent, until eventually Carl becomes a surrogate father for Russell.

  • What’s up with Russell’s family, anyway? We spend the entire film hearing about his absent father. There’s not a single moment of worry about Russell’s sudden disappearance when he inadvertently flies away with Carl. At no point do Carl or Russell show any concern about Russell missing his family, or his family missing him. The entire movie had me convinced that Russell was the child of a single-parent family, whose father had grown so distant that there was virtually no emotional bond between them whatsoever, given Russell’s lack of concern about his (admittedly inadvertent) kidnapping by Carl…but then, during the Wilderness Explorer award ceremony, suddenly Russell’s mother is sitting in the audience. He has a mother? What was she thinking during the time that her kid disappeared? Why was she so willing to allow Russell to continue his association with the old coot who kidnapped him, took him to South America, and nearly got him killed?

  • And, finally, there’s the familiar soapbox of Pixar’s roles for women. Let’s run down the women in Up.

    • Ellie. Initially, she’s one of the best female roles we’ve seen yet. As a child, she’s the stronger of the two main characters, taking the lead in her interactions with Carl, avoiding traditional gender stereotypes by fixating on the explorer and dreaming about adventuring around the world, and becoming one of the few Pixar characters available for little girls to look to and emulate.

      Then she marries Carl, grows old, and dies.

      Sure, it’s her memory that helps to prompt Carl to go on his adventure, but she’s not part of this adventure. Her only “adventure” in life was to get married. It’s sweet and all, and many of the moments where we see Carl missing her are very touching, but still…she spends the entire movie dead.

    • Kevin. A bird whose role is essentially comic relief and plot point, given a male name.

    • Russell’s mom. Never referred to, and only seen for a few seconds at the end of the film. As if that’s not bad enough, she wasn’t even allowed to be the proud parent awarding Russell his “Assisting the Elderly” badge when his father didn’t show up — rather, she sat passively out in the audience, apparently willing to allow Russell to be humiliated, until Carl shows up to act as a surrogate father and save the day.

      If Pixar wanted to have Carl step in, then why not have her on stage with Russell for the ceremony, then have Carl politely ask her for permission? Or why couldn’t Carl be in the audience, and have him give Russell Ellie’s pin afterwards, when it’s just Carl, Russell, and Russell’s mom? Why not find some way to arrange things that wouldn’t involve further marginalizing the mother?

  • How did the explorer get all those dogs? He must have added cloning to his list of achievements, as as far as we can tell, every one of those dogs was male. (Okay, you could make an argument that he only gave the translation collars male voices…but why bother to make multiple distinct voices for different dogs, but not bother to make girl voices for the girl dogs? I stand by my assumption that every dog on that ship was a male.)

  • The dogs flying little airplanes went too far. Until that point, all of those dogs were still dogs doing dog things, simply with the added comedy of the translation collars allowing us to hear what they were saying. Once they got in the airplanes, though, they broke the rules of the world that had already been established.

So, once again, we gave Pixar a chance, and once again, we were roundly unimpressed.

Pixar and Gender

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Long-time readers will recognize this particular soapbox, but it’s good to know I’m not the only one standing on it: Pixar’s Gender Problem:

Whenever a new Pixar movie comes out, I wrestle with the same frustration: Pixar’s gender problem. While Disney’s long history of antipathy toward mothers and the problematic popularity of the Disney Princess line are well-traveled territory for feminist critiques, Pixar’s gender problem often slips under the radar.

The Pixar M.O. is (somewhat) subtler than the old your-stepmom-is-a-witch tropes of Disney past. Instead, Pixar’s continued failure to posit female characters as the central protagonists in their stories contributes to the idea that male is neutral and female is particular. This is not to say that Pixar does not write female characters. What I am taking issue with is the ad-nauseam repetition of female characters as helpers, love interests, and moral compasses to the male characters whose problems, feelings, and desires drive the narratives.

Much of the post covers much the same ground that I have in the past (first asking if Pixar is a ‘boys only’ club, then investigating Wall•E’s Misogyn•E, and then in response to an interviewer’s question). There is some word of an upcoming film that I hadn’t heard about yet that does appear to have a female lead. All may not be rosy just yet, though…

The Bear and the Bow: OOOOOH! Somebody told Pixar that they needed to make a movie with a girl as the main character! So, duh, it’s going to be “Pixar’s first fairy tale”!!! The main character will be, get this, a PRINCESS! But, since the Pixar people are probably good Bay Area liberals, I’m sure the princess will want to defy her parents’/society’s expectations. Where have we seen that before, I wonder? No cookies for rehashing the same old shit. If we’re super lucky, she won’t marry the prince, which will allow us to cover the same ground that Robert Munsch and Free to Be You and Me covered in the goddamn ’70s. Maybe it will be good, but no matter how good it is, it still PISSES ME OFF that girls get to be main characters only when they are princess (or marrying up the social ladder a la Belle and Mulan) in fairy tale worlds. Boys can be main characters anywhere, but if a girl is the main character, you can bet your ass it’s a fantasy world.

So it may be a step forward. If we’re lucky, it’ll be a big step forward, and it may even be enough to get Prairie and I back in the theater for a Pixar film. Noone can really argue that Pixar is bad at storytelling (well, aside from Cars, that is), but in the end…

…It’s not just the stories they choose to tell, it’s how they choose to tell them: in a way that always relegates female characters to the periphery, where they can serve and encourage male characters, but are never, ever important enough to carry a whole movie on their own shoulders. Unless they’re, you know, princesses.

(via Kottke)

More on Pixar (Or, Why I Suck at Soundbites)

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A couple weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Jaime Weinman, who writes for Macleans (in her words, “sort of Canada’s TIME and NEWSWEEK”), asking for a quote for an article she was working on about Pixar’s future. I agreed, and in my usual style, sent her a small book. The final article was published late in June, and — proving yet again that I just cannot write for soundbites — my quote was boiled down to one simple line:

[Non-Pixar animated films] follow the Pixar example in some respects; they’ve especially learned from the fact that Pixar’s movies all focus on male characters and appeal the most to boys. (Michael Hanscom, a computer analyst who blogs at michaelhanscom.com, dubbed WALL-E “MISOGYN-E” and says that while he likes Pixar, he’s not going to see their movies in theatres “until we see some evidence that they’ve let a girl into the clubhouse to play.”) But for the most part, these movies are far away from Pixar’s artist-oriented approach.

Heh. Not at all inaccurate (except, perhaps, for titling me a ‘computer analyst,’ as flattering as that is) — and believe me, this is not a complaint, I don’t envy Jaime or her editors the task of boiling my response down to something that would fit within the scope of the article — but for the sake of completion, under the jump is my full response to her question. If you’ve read my earlier posts on this matter, there are no big surprises awaiting.

Read more

Links for June 18th from 12:39 to 13:07

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(Note: Normally, these will show up sometime after or around midnight-ish each day. I just wanted to make sure the system was working correctly, so this one’s a bit early. The joys of bug testing!)

Sometime between 12:39 and 13:07, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Wall.E : Pixar animation: [Sound designer Ben] Burtt has spent much of the past two years holed up on his own in a concrete bunker at Pixar's studios, recording the sounds made by toothbrushes, household appliances, miniature jet planes, army tanks and his own voice.
  • Exits: Stewart Butterfield’s bizarre resignation letter to Yahoo: I'm also told that this email is classic Butterfield, and that his employees at Flickr would stage dramatic readings of some of his better missives at Flickr's San Francisco headquarters…
  • in vestimentis ursum: Surely the robot hiding in the bear's clothing, vestimentis ursum, is impressive. So: armed with my childish curiousity and the spurious excuse of 'product design research,' I set out to discover what, exactly, these creatures are hiding.
  • Requiem For A Day Off: Absolutely incredible re-cut trailer, setting Ferris Bueller's Day Off to music from Requiem For a Dream.
  • Takei Marriage License Big News [UPDATED]: George Takei (Star Trek's Sulu) and his partner Brad Altman get California's first same-sex marriage license. Congratulations!

Misogyn•E

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With more marketing materials coming out for Pixar‘s upcoming movie Wall•E, it’s becoming quite clear that they are continuing with a trend that I’ve mentioned previously (briefly here, and in more depth here) of being extremely male centered in creating characters for their animated films.

At first, I thought there might be a little bit of hope, as while the main character is given a male name, it is a robot — and, further, as there apparently is little to no spoken dialogue in the film, one might (at this point) argue that Wall•E is technically sexless. Admittedly, it’s a bit dodgy, given our tendency to anthropomorphize mechanical devices, and robots in particular tend to be seen as male (seriously, has anyone ever referred to R2-D2 as a ‘she’?). Still, it was a possibility.

Then I started poking around the Buy n Large website that Pixar has set up to help promote the film. In Wall•E’s universe, Buy n Large is apparently the company that makes Wall•E, along with a host of other products, and there’s a lot of cute in jokes and jabs at today’s tech companies hidden (and not so hidden — just check out the disclaimer text at the bottom of the home page) in the website.

On Jason Kottke’s recommendation, I bounced over to the ‘Robotics’ section of the site and started browsing through the four robot models available for the home (no permalink available, thanks to the all-Flash presentation: click ‘Robotics’ on the top menu bar, then choose ‘Robot Models’ from the left hand navigation). Here’s a brief rundown of the four models that Buy n Large offers:

  • Sall•E: The Buy n Large Vaccubot. “Tired of cleaning the stairs and struggling to reach under your sofa to vacuum? With the BnL SALL•E Vaccubot, cleaning dirty carpets and drapes yourself can be a thing of the past.”

  • Gar•E: The Buy n Large Yardbot. “The GAR•E is ready to handle the most time-consuming and difficult aspects of keeping a yeard in tip-top shape, from lawn trimming and hedge shaping to barbecue cleaning and maintenance.”

  • Nanc•E: The Buy n Large Nannybot. “…with the new NANC•E Nannybot you can rest easily, knowing that every aspect of your child’s health and happiness has been addressed.”

  • Wend•E: The Buy n Large Washbot. “With the WEND•E, washing, drying, folding, and putting away your clothes is a thing of the past.”

  • And, of course, though it’s not listed on the site (or at least not this portion of the site), there’s Wall•E, the garbage collector.

Really, this isn’t even subtle. The traditional “women’s work” of cleaning, laundry, and taking care of the children is assigned to Sally, Wendy, and Nancy, while Gary goes out to do the yardwork and Wally picks up the garbage, typically “men’s chores.” These are stereotypes dating back decades — do we really need to be reinforcing them this obviously in today’s family films?

I also skimmed over the information collected on Wall•E’s Wikipedia page to get a better idea of what the movie’s about. Here‘s John Lasseter’s summary of the film while presenting to Disney investors:

WALL-E is the story of the last little robot on Earth. He is a robot that his programming was to help clean up. You see, it’s set way in the future. Through consumerism, rampant, unchecked consumerism, the Earth was covered with trash. And to clean up, everyone had to leave Earth and set in place millions of these little robots that went around to clean up the trash and make Earth habitable again.

Well, the cleanup program failed with the exception of this one little robot and he’s left on Earth doing his duty all alone. But it’s not a story about science fiction. It’s a love story, because, you see, WALL-E falls in love with Eve, a robot from a probe that comes down to check on Earth, and she’s left there to check on and see how things are going and he absolutely falls in love with her.

So much for the possibility that, despite the name, Wall•E might be sexless. Once again, the main character in a Pixar film is male, and any female characters are secondary. Furthermore, it sounds like this Eve character isn’t one that will immediately appeal to most little girls. According to Andrew Stanton:

…WALL-E falls head over heals with a probot named EVE. Now, Wall-E’s feelings aren’t reciprocated because, well, she has no feelings. She’s a robot, cold and clinical. WALL-E is the one who has evolved over time and garnered feelings. So in the end, it’s gonna be WALL-E’s pursuit to win EVE’s heart, and his unique appreciation of life to become mankind’s last hope to rediscover its roots.

What’s been frustrating so far is simply that in many of Pixar’s prior films, there’s no particular reason why one or another of their characters couldn’t be female rather than male — would Ratatouille have been any less well done if he were a she? Would the rescue of the ant colony be less spectacular if Julia Louis-Dreyfus had voiced Flik against Dave Foley’s Prince Atta?

As I’ve said before, I don’t at all deny that, with few exceptions, Pixar’s films are incredibly well done — they’re technological marvels, they’re written as gorgeously as they are rendered, and they’re some of the only family-friendly fare that’s out there that has real heart and is genuinely worth watching. I’ve enjoyed most all of them (with Cars being a notable exception). However, it continues to be rather disappointing that they’ve yet to do anything with a strong, central female main character, and it’s doubly distressing that the available information on Wall•E is traditionalist and very obviously sexist.

This looks to be the third time running (following Cars and Ratatouille) that I’ll wait to rent Pixar’s latest, rather than sending any of my money their way via the theater.

Lastly, a bit of a disclaimer: to be honest, I believe misogyny to be an overly strong word for what’s happening here. However, when searching for synonyms for ‘sexist‘ or ‘sexism‘, it was only one of two words that would mimic Pixar’s ‘-e’ naming strategy, and while ‘bigotry‘ is probably technically closer, it didn’t carry quite the emotional impact that I wanted for the title.

Addendum: Here’s something I dug out of my del.icio.us bookmarks — Washington Post guest columnist Jen Chaney raising some of the same questions I do.

Pixar has done it again. With “Ratatouille,” the studio has created another dazzling, clever, uplifting adventure, this time about a French rodent with a flair for food preparation. But Pixar also has done something else again: It’s delivered yet another kiddie-centric piece of entertainment with a male in the starring role.

I give Pixar much credit for breathing life into some gutsy, admirable females. Helen Parr of “The Incredibles” not only keeps her household in order, she can stretch her limbs to limits even the uber-flexible Madonna couldn’t reach. Sally Carrera in “Cars” is the spunky owner of her own business. And in “Ratatouille,” Colette (voiced by Janeane Garofalo) makes an impassioned speech about how, as the only woman working in the kitchen at the chi-chi Gusteau’s, she is tired of getting pushed around by all the men. She is femme, hear her roar.

But still, in the end, all of these women wind up playing love interest — and second fiddle — to the heroes.

Rataphooey

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Given that Ratatouille has just hit theaters, I feel compelled to revisit a question I asked just over a year ago: Is Pixar a ‘boys only’ club?

Just where are the girls in Pixar films? To date, there’s not a single Pixar film that has a female main character: The Incredibles comes the closest, but even there, both Helen Parr/Elastigirl and Violet are supporting characters, and it’s Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible that’s the hero.

Come on, Pixar. You’ve done superheroes, bugs, cars, cowboy and space toys…isn’t it time to take the ‘NO GIRLS ALLOWED’ sign off of the clubhouse door?

Is Pixar a ‘boys only’ club?

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Honestly, I’d never even thought about this until Prairie brought it up after we watched one of the trailers for Cars, when its predominantly male-centric theme got her started thinking about the rest of Pixar‘s oevure. We got started talking about it again this morning, after I noticed this quote from Bonnie Hunt excerpted on the Luxo weblog:

One night John [Lasseter] said to me, “The next movie I’m writing, you’ll be the girl in it.”

See that? The girl. Really, that sounds about right. Just where are the girls in Pixar films? Let’s take a quick look…

  1. Toy Story: Bo Peep, Andy’s Mom, and Hannah (the infant sister). All definite supporting characters. Andy’s Mom and Hannah are barely there, and Bo Peep is little more than a cute flirtation gag.

  2. A Bug’s Life: More women, but more characters overall, also: Princess Atta, Princess Dot, The Queen, Gypsy Moth, and Rosie the Black Widow. It’s still a male-dominated cast — even the ladybug is a boy (it’s a great gag, but when looked at from this context, suddenly it’s not as funny).

  3. Toy Story 2: Jesse, Mrs. Potato Head, Tour Guide Barbie, Bo Peep, Andy’s Mom, and Hannah. Jesse, admittedly, is a wonderful character, but still definitely a supporting character — this is still Woody and Buzz’s story. The other additions are an overbearing housewife and a dim blonde. As Prairie said, “Hooray for womankind!”

  4. Monsters, Inc.: Boo, Celia (Mike’s Medusa-like girlfriend), and Roz (the supervisor/secretary). An infant, a neglected love interest, and a stereotypical crone of a secretary (voiced by a man, no less).

  5. Finding Nemo: Dory, Peach (the starfish), Deb/Flo (the fish whose ‘sister’ is her reflection in the tank), and Coral (Nemo’s mom). Dory’s certainly a major character in the film, but still essentially a supporting character (this is, after all, Marlin and Nemo’s story)…and she’s addled to boot. Sweet, lovable, and funny…but addled.

  6. The Incredibles: Helen Parr (Elastigirl), Mrs. Hogenson (who?), Violet, Mirage, Edna Mode, Kari (the babysitter), and Honey (Frozone’s wife). To date, Helen is Pixar’s strongest female character, and the closest they’ve come to a female lead, but again, the movie is about how Bob (Mr. Incredible) adjusts to the changing circumstances in his world. We certainly can’t ignore Honey, who is only present as a voice haranguing Frozone as he tries to find his costume.

  7. Cars: Sally’s the only female character in any of the previews. According to the IMDB, there’s also a Lizzie and a Flo. Until the movie appears, we won’t really know just how strong of a character Sally is, but the trailers make it obvious that this is, once again, a boy’s movie (to the point that Prairie isn’t looking forward to Cars as much as she has other Pixar films, due to the automotive theme).

  8. Ratatouille: This one’s so early in development that the only definite information to date is that it’s about “a rat named Ratatouille who lives in a upmarket Parisian restaurant run by an eccentric chef.”

To date, there’s not a single Pixar film that has a female main character: The Incredibles comes the closest, but even there, both Helen Parr/Elastigirl and Violet are supporting characters, and it’s Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible that’s the hero. Look at the ‘poster wall’ on Pixar’s website. None of the poster designs feature a female character…even the rollover effects exclude every female character save Dory.

As Prairie pointed out to me, where there are plenty of Disney films that girls can spend hours playing and pretending to be the Disney Princesses in (most of them, at least), there isn’t a single Pixar film that she would have wanted to play as a child.

While some might argue that Disney as a whole is sexist, I don’t quite see that. Disney’s older works are often based on traditional fairy tales, where the missing mother/evil step-mother is an integral part of the tale (as is the handsome prince coming to the rescue); newer films have been much better. Tarzan, for instance: while Jane’s mom is conspicuously missing (presumably permanently, and not just left behind in England, as Jane’s father cheerfully joins her in remaining in Africa) and Tarzan’s parents (mother and father) are killed, Kala is a very strong and loving mother figure, and Jane — like Megara, Mulan and Kida before her — is a deliciously strong woman in her own right.

It’s a pity that, as one commenter posited on the Feministing weblog, movie studios in general are both constrained by and unwilling to challenge what appears to be a very male-dominated movie audience, even for children’s movies.

The two big reasons for the dearth of females in G-rated films are that a lot of the source material (childrens’ books, fairly tales) feature male protagonists, and more importantly, a number of very well-made childrens’ films featuring female protagonists underperformed at the box office (A Little Princess, Matilda, Because of Winn-Dixie…), leading a lot of executives to believe that boys won’t watch films with female protagonists. So while studio executives bear a large measure of responsibility for not pushing harder, they’re also reacting to the market in this case.

So how about it, Pixar? You’ve shown the world that not only does Disney not have a lockdown on animated films, but that “children’s” films can be made that are good family films as well, rather than aiming the films so low that the unfortunate parents have to grit their teeth for an hour and a half whenever they take their kids to the movies. For over a decade now (since Toy Story‘s debut in 1995), you’ve consistently produced some of the best films — not just animated films, or children’s films, but best films — around.

How about letting the girls in to play as well?

iTunes “Another World” by Beborn Beton from the album Tales From Another World (1997, 4:25).

Toy Story 3 having problems

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It’s nice to wake up on a Monday morning to some good news.

Word broke a while ago that Disney was working on moving ahead with creating a third sequel to the popular Disney/Pixar CGI Toy Story films. However, due to the currently strained relationship between the two companies, Disney would be doing this third film entirely on their own and without Pixar’s involvement, as they hold all the rights to the property under the terms of the current agreement between the two studios.

Few, if any, of the people I know thought this was anything remotely close to a good idea, given Disney’s current inability to produce anything of quality and tendency to pump out cheap direct-to-video sequels to their classic films in lieu of any real creativity. The only animated films that have come out of the Disney empire for the past few years that have really been worth seeing have been the Pixar collaborations, and Disney trying to continue a Pixar success sounded like nothing but trouble.

Apparently, though, my friends and I weren’t the only ones to feel that way, as Disney is having problems finding anyone willing to sign on to the Toy Story 3 project.

No one wants to direct ‘Toy Story 3.’

That’s the word in Hollywood’s animation world, where the third installment of the incredibly successful Pixar series has no director, writer or, possibly, stars.

My sources in the animation biz tell me that Disney, which will make ‘Toy Story 3’ without Pixar, cannot find a director to guide the project.

[…]

Disney has the right to make sequels to all the Pixar movies it distributed, including ‘Toy Story,’ ‘The Incredibles,’ ‘Finding Nemo,’ etc. But there’s a hitch — since Pixar developed all the animation materials to create the movies, it also gets to keep them.

In other words: Disney is now trying to hire another team of animators to recreate Buzz Lightyear, Woody and all the other ‘Toy Story’ characters so that they look the same. It will have to start from scratch to reproduce Pixar’s creative work.

The next step, of course, is to find a writer and director for the project. With Lasseter gone, my source says, “Every single animator of note has turned down the director’s job. They don’t want to cross Pixar. They’ve become the only deal in town.”

Good news, indeed!

(via Luxo)

iTunes “Heresy” by Rush from the album Roll the Bones (1991, 5:25).