Pixar boss Pete Docter is firm that the studio won’t follow Disney’s route with live action remakes in the style of The Jungle Book or The Lion King.
For a couple of decades now, one of Disney’s ongoing creative strategies has been to raid its back catalogue of animated features and remake those classics in live action. The strategy paid off handsomely for a long time; remember early successes like 2010’s Alice In Wonderland or 2016’s The Jungle Book? The former grossed over a billion dollars at the global box office, the latter wasn’t far behind either.
In recent years, though, the approach hasn’t been as lucrative as it used to be. You could chalk that up to the declining fortunes of the global box office in general, but the numbers are slowly dwindling and the strategy has come under increasing criticism for being creatively bankrupt. It’s with some relief, then, that we can report that Pixar isn’t planning on following in the same footsteps as its parent company.
Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter, when asked by Time Magazine whether the animation studio would consider duplicating Disney’s approach, offered a firm answer on the matter:
“No,” he said, “and this might bite me in the butt for saying it, but it sort of bothers me. I like making movies that are original and unique to themselves. To remake it, it’s not very interesting to me personally. It would be tough. So much of what we create only works because of the rules of the [animated] world. So if you have a human walk into a house that floats, your mind goes, ‘Wait a second. Hold on. Houses are super heavy. How are balloons lifting the house?’ But if you have a cartoon guy and he stands there in the house, you go, ‘Okay, I’ll buy it.’ The worlds that we’ve built just don’t translate very easily.”
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It’s a good point and one that has been used to criticise some of Disney’s attempts to realise its animated characters in live action. Remember the furore over the character designs in 2019’s live action remake of The Lion King? The two mediums simply don’t naturally ‘translate’ as Docter puts it, and we’re glad to hear him say it.
After a tough spell, Pixar seem to be back on track these days which is heartening for lots of reasons – especially because success gives the company enough clout to decide its own future. Its next film is Inside Out 2, which releases here in the UK on Friday.
