Exclusive: ‘Toy Story 3’ Writer Michael Arndt Penning “Wildly Ambitious” Peter Docter Film About The Formation Of Ideas
At D23 today Pixar and Disney announced a pair of Pixar movies, both of them shrouded in a certain degree of mystery.
The first, scheduled to arrive in theaters on November 27th, 2013, is an untitled project about dinosaurs. You might remember that a couple of years ago, screen grabs taken from the “Up” DVD showed production artwork pinned to a wall behind an animator that showed a young boy with a slender-necked dinosaurs. Speculation flew wildly, with most deciding that the artwork was most likely part of an as-yet-unannounced short film. Nope. This new movie, directed by Bob Peterson (and co-directed by Peter Sohn), who has been a Pixar mainstay since the early days (most recently co-directing “Up” with Pete Docter and providing the voice of Dug the dog), centers around an alternate version of earth wherein the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs missed the planet entirely, so humans have evolved side-by-side with dinosaurs.
If this synopsis conjures up images of the live action “Mario Bros.” movie, you’re not alone. That movie shared a similar conceit, but we’re fairly certain the as-yet-untitled Pixar dinosaur project won’t feature dino-human gangsters and Bob Hoskins (but our fingers are crossed that the Was (Not Was) song “Walk the Dinosaur” will be included in the soundtrack). Here’s the official log-line which really doesn’t tell us much more than we don’t already know.
What if the cataclysmic asteroid that forever changed life on Earth actually missed the planet completely and giant dinosaurs never became extinct?
It’s also dubbed, so you know, a “hilarious tale.”
The other, more mysterious project is from Pete Docter (the co-Director is Ronnie del Carmen) and scheduled to arrive on May 30, 2014. This is the mystery project that Pixar teased a few months ago. We reached out to our contacts in the animation world recently and we can fill you in on what we know.
According to the official statement, the movie will be produced by Jonas Rivera and directed by Docter, but what they aren’t telling you is that, according to our source, the script is being supplied by “Little Miss Sunshine”/”Toy Story 3” writer Michael Arndt. The current logline provided at D23 says that the film takes place “inside the human mind,” but we were told, more specifically, that it’s about the formation of ideas. It’s being described to us as “wildly ambitious” (even by the admittedly high Pixar standards) which means, hopefully, that all that cash being brought in by “Cars 2” pajamas can be funneled into producing something truly wild and unique. We wish we could have shared this info earlier, but here it is now.
Keep in mind that both of these movies will follow the already announced “Brave” (next summer) and “Monsters University” (summer 2013), and those looking for some fresh, super genius Pixar product after the recent sequel-heavy slate, will be very, very happy.