Pixar has become a powerhouse in the world of entertainment and has brought some classics like Toy Story and Finding Nemo, but it has also left some projects aside, either cancelling them or changing the original plan completely. Pixar’s first movie was Toy Story, released in 1995, and was the first entirely animated feature film. Toy Story opened a lot of doors for Pixar, which has produced over 20 movies since then, among those a couple of sequels.
Aside from the quality and attention to detail in them, Pixar movies have some elements in common, such as the main character going through a journey of self-improvement and more mature topics that other children’s movies (especially Disney’s fairy tales) wouldn’t address. These are some of the reasons why Pixar has been a big success and its stories continue to be of interest, but in order to keep up with its audience and make sure they won’t go away, the studio has had to make some important decisions that have affected its projects.
Like any other movie studio, Pixar has a list of cancelled movies as well as ideas for sequels that were either never made or went through a lot of changes, resulting in very different stories that made it to the big screen. Here’s every cancelled Pixar movie and how the sequels that happened were changed.
Back in 2005, a collaboration between Pixar, Disney, and Warner Bros. was happening thanks to James Dalessandro’s novel 1906. Based upon the events surrounding the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, the story follows the battles between political and cultural factions before and after the earthquake and fire, all told by reporter Annalisa Passarelli. 1906 would have been Pixar’s first live-action movie, and even had Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) on board as director. Dalessandro’s script got a rewrite by Michael Hirst (Vikings) in 2012, but later that year, Disney and Pixar left the project, and it’s now in pre-production limbo at Warner Bros.
Perhaps the best-known cancelled Pixar movie, Newt was scheduled for a 2011 release and even shared some art for the public to get an idea of what it was going to be about. With Gary Rydstrom set to direct, Newt was a tale of love and survival, following the last remaining blue-footed newts as they were forced by scientists to save their species, but they couldn’t stand each other. Newt was cancelled because the story was very similar to Fox’s Rio (released in 2011) and the idea wasn’t working in pre-production. The project was passed to Pete Docter, who according to Pixar president Edwin Catmull, agreed to work on it under the condition that he could do a story of his own. He then pitched what became Inside Out, and Newt was officially cancelled.
Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline) had a four picture deal with Disney and Pixar, and among those was a movie titled Shademaker. Unlike the rest of Pixar’s movies, Shademaker would have been a stop-motion adventure and was given a 2013 release date. Shademaker (later retitled The Shadow King), told the story of a New York orphan named Hap who hid his “fantastically weird hands with long fingers from a cruel world”. With the help of a living shadow girl, Hap learned to make amazing hand shadows that came to life, and so his hands became “incredible weapons in a shadow war against a ravenous monster bent on killing Hap’s brother Richard and ultimately destroying New York”. The Shadow King reportedly failed to meet production goals, and Disney and Pixar left the project, giving Selick the option to take it to other studios, but it still hasn’t made it to the big screen.
Another project in the Selick/Pixar deal was an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. This fantasy novel centers on a boy called Nobody “Bod” Owens, who after his family is brutally murdered, is adopted and raised by the supernatural occupants of a graveyard. The Graveyard Book would have been the studio’s first adapted work, and following Selick’s departure, Ron Howard was announced as director. Though Disney is still interested in it, there have been no updates on the development of the project.
Finding Nemo got its sequel, Finding Dory, in 2016, but the original plans were very different. Back in 2005, after disagreements between Michael Eisner and Steve Jobs over the distribution of Pixar’s movies, Disney announced the creation of a new animation studio – Circle 7 Animation – with the purpose of making sequels to the Pixar movies owned by Disney, among those Finding Nemo. Circle 7 was shut down after the Pixar/Disney merge without producing any movies, but the idea for Finding Nemo 2 was revealed: Nemo would have met his long-lost twin brother, Remy, and Marlin would be captured, prompting Nemo, Remy, and Dory to join forces to save him.
Another sequel assigned to Circle 7 Animation was Monsters Inc 2, titled Monsters Inc 2: Lost in Scaradise. In it, Mike and Sulley would have visited the human world to give Boo a birthday present, only to find that she had moved. They would have then been trapped in the human world and parted ways after disagreeing on what to do. Monsters Inc 2 made it a bit farther into production than Finding Nemo 2, as pieces of concept art were released years later, but the idea was ultimately changed and the prequel movie Monsters University was made instead.
Toy Story 3 was also among Circle 7 Animation’s plans, and the story went through different versions. One had Andy and the toys visiting his grandmother’s house for the night as his room was being remodeled. The toys, along with new characters Hee-Hee and Gladiola, would have then tried to figure out who stole the toys one by one in a whodunit type of story. The final version had the toys traveling to Taiwan after a worldwide recall of Buzz Lightyear toys had their friend being sent back to the factory. Once there, Buzz would have met other toys, including a new Star Command action figure set to be his replacement. Once Circle 7 was shut down, this idea for Toy Story 3 was cancelled.
