Since the success of 2016’s The Jungle Book, Disney has been leaning hard towards live-action remakes of their beloved animated classics. While this has been frustrating for some fans, as many argued it’s creatively bankrupt, it doesn’t seem the House of Mouse is stopping anytime soon. However, unlike its parent company, Pixar has no intentions of translating its stories into live-action.
Pete Docter, who has been serving as Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer since 2018, set the record straight about the acclaimed studio’s stance on remaking classics for live-action.
Pixar Stories Won’t Translate Well into Live-Action
One thing Pixar has excelled over the years is its engrossing world buildings through stories, which could only work in the form of animation. So it’s reasonable to see why the studio heads have no interest in remaking them for the live-action format, as the magic of animation would be lost between the translations. Moreover, the idea itself is not very interesting to Docter, as he prefers films that are “original and unique to themselves.”
He told Time:
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
The Pixar boss is not wrong with his assessment, as there’s no incentive to rehash an already existing story, which would become an inferior experience compared to their animated counterpart.
While the years post-COVID have been tumultuous for the iconic studio, as their last two releases underperformed, with Inside Out 2‘s ginormous success, they’re back on track.
Pixar’s Future Highly Hinged on Inside Out 2
Ahead of Inside Out 2‘s release, Pete Docter shared that the future of Pixar highly hinges on the performance of the sequel. Considering their attempt to tell original stories has had little success post-COVID, mostly due to Disney’s decision to premiere them on streaming, it’s understandable why they were banking on Inside Out 2.
If this doesn’t do well at the theater, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business
Fortunately, they don’t have to worry about changing their approach drastically, as Inside Out 2 is not only putting the company back on track but is also saving this year’s summer.
However, it’s important to note the reason Inside Out 2 is working so well is because there was a legitimate story to be told, which isn’t always the case with sequels. Hopefully, Disney will not take the wrong lessons from its success, and with Elio heading to theatres next year, fans will hope there will be a steady balance between original stories and worthy expansions.
Inside Out 2 is currently running in theatres.
