Moving Away

It looks like Pixar's big green brontosaurus is not stomping into theaters next summer...

Yes, in a rather shocking but inevitable move, Pixar's The Good Dinosaur has been delayed. It makes sense because no new director was announced for the project after Bob Peterson was booted off. Only a few Brain Trust members are "shepherding" it and fixing whatever problems they have with it.

So when is it opening now? November 25, 2015...

That was Finding Dory's original release date, now that sequel has been moved back... To June 17, 2016. This one will go head-to-head with How To Train Your Dragon 3, and it'll make for a very interesting animation box office battle. If I were Fox, I'd move Dragon 3 as soon as possible. Finding Dory is poised to be a box office gargantuan, and if Dragon 2 pulls a Despicable Me 2 next summer, then it'll be massive as well.

On top of that, it looks like we'll have to wait till summer 2017 at the earliest for Lee Unkrich's "Day of the Dead" project... Disney not officially announcing that his film wasn't the summer 2016 release makes a lot more sense now, ditto its absence from D23...

Inside Out is still slated for a June 19, 2015 release...

2014 will be a Pixar-less year...

It makes me wonder if Party Central - the Monsters University short that was supposed to be attached to the dinosaur film - will end up going on the Monsters University Blu-ray. That is, if they haven't produced the actual discs yet...

Pixar's higher ups can't deem that Inside Out is strong enough to enter production for the summer of 2014, there's very little time and Disney decided to fill The Good Dinosaur's original May 30th spot with tentpole/pointless fairy tale reboot Maleficent.

Could this be like the old times? When you didn't get a Pixar motion picture event every summer?

If anything, this could be a very good thing. You heard that right, a good thing...

I'd rather have a good Good Dinosaur than a rushed Good Dinosaur, and I think Lasseter & Co. are well aware of this. They've already got a bad reputation for firing directors, so it's better that they give whoever takes the throne a lot of time to sort out the problems. I just sincerely hope that this is not a Newt situation where they delay the film, only to outright cancel it. I still think that Newt isn't dead in the dirt, it's just sitting on the shelf, waiting to be re-evaluated.

Logically, nothing can really take the summer 2014 spot now, so we'll have to wait till a 2-a-year deal the following year. It's almost like Walt Disney Animation Studios' schedule, two films in 2016 and two in 2018 due to Pixar releasing two of their films in 2015 and 2017. Maybe Pixar will release two films every other year (was Ed Catmull alluding to this a couple months ago?), rather than one each year. If it ensures quality/non-rushed films, then I welcome that. It'll be abrupt, since we've been used to getting one Pixar film every year.

When Peterson was removed from the project, I speculated that Pixar's recent director-change problems were due to their one-a-year schedule and the fact that their films' release dates are set in stone a long while before they hit theaters. Maybe breaking that current one-a-year tradition will relieve the animators and directors of tremendous pressure, so they'll be able to have their stories in fine shape before production begins thus... No more director changes! That is... If it's not true that John Lasseter is an evil tyrant hellbent on tooling everything to be his way.

Anyways, see where I'm going with this?

No films are scheduled for release in 2014, thus allowing Pete Docter to perfect his film, the replacement director to perfect The Good Dinosaur, and Andrew Stanton to perfect Finding Dory. Unkrich will have more than enough time with his film, and Teddy Newton's film could very well be the autumn 2017 release rather than what a lot of people think will be the autumn 2017 release - a sequel. Give them time, I say.

We might see even more changes to the schedule, but in the mean time, I hope that The Good Dinosaur turns out to be a fine film whoever is directing it. Maybe things will start looking up, and all these troubles with director changes will be a thing of the past. A rather rough phase, if you will.

Stay optimistic...

And just watch... People think Pixar is on the decline? Well what's a better "comeback" than two great, original films being released the same year?