Pixar Animation’s The Good Dinosaur is very close to going bad. The film is due out in less than a year, but it has just been confirmed that director Bob Peterson has been pulled off the project. It’s the fourth time in eight movies that this has happened to the studio, which is fully owned by Disney now.
“All directors get really deep in their films,” Pixar president Ed Catmull said this week, reports The Los Angeles Times. “Sometimes you just need a different perspective to get the idea out. Sometimes directors ... are so deeply embedded in their ideas it actually takes someone else to finish it up. I would go so far as to argue that a lot of live-action films would be better off with that same process.”
This would have been Peterson’s first solo directing job, but he has been at the studio since Toy Story and co-directed Up with Pete Docter. He came up with the idea for The Good Dinosaur, which is set in a world where dinosaurs never went extinct.
As Entertainment Weekly notes, this is quickly becoming the usual operation for Pixar, a studio that is currently in a run of middling films. They still bring in the crowds, but Cars 2, Brave and Monsters University have all failed to win overwhelming praise. Coincidentally, directors were changed on both Cars 2 and Brave during production.
Docter also spoke with the Times, noting that Pixar isn’t perfect with directors. His next film, Inside Out, is scheduled for 2015. “We take our best guess,” he said. “We try to diagnose: What are the necessary skills? How does this person measure up? They're going to need buttressing here, here they totally shine, and try to pair them with the right people. But if you figure it out, let us know.”
The Good Dinosaur still doesn’t have a director and at the D23 event earlier this month, all Pixar showed for it was concept art. Peterson did not attend the event, which insiders noted appeared to be a sign that he was on the way out.
The Good Dinosaur is set for release on May 30, 2014.
image: Wikimedia Commons
