Pete Docter To Direct Pixar Movie Set Inside The Mind [D23 Expo]
Today at the Walt Disney Studios presentation at the D23 Expo, Disney announced two new movies from Pixar Animation Studios. Both films, yet to be officially titled, will be released in the slots following the announced Monsters Inc prequel Monsters University, which hits theaters on June 21st 2013. We just posted about the first of the projects, which involves dinosaurs — read that here. The second project is directed by Monsters Inc/Up helmer Pete Docter, and is set inside the mind. Read more about it, after the jump.
The working title for this movie is "The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside The Mind". The official plot synopsis follows:
Pixar takes audiences on incredible journeys into extraordinary worlds: from the darkest depths of the ocean to the top of the tepui mountains in South America; from the fictional metropolis of Monstropolis to a futuristic fantasy of outer space. From director Pete Docter ("Up," "Monsters, Inc.") and producer Jonas Rivera ("Up"), the inventive new film will take you to a place that everyone knows, but no one has ever seen: the world inside the human mind.
They have also released a "twitter-only" synopsis, which is funny that movie studio marketing teams are now trying to release loglines for the under 140 characters social web:
From director Pete Docter comes an inventive new film that explores a world that everyone knows, but no one has seen: inside the human mind.
Sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it?
The movie is being co-directed by Ronnie del Carmen, who started out in television animation on Widget, Where's Waldo and the Batman animated series, before joining Pixar's Finding Nemo as story supervisor. Ronnie has since storyboarded Ratatouille and Up (which he also was Story Supervisor). del Carmen made his directorial debut with the Pixar short film Dug's New Mission, which was released on the Up DVD/Blu-ray.
Docter is reunited with Up-producer Jonas Rivera, who started with Pixar as a production office assistant on Toy Story and worked his way up through the art and marketing departments.
Also, The Playlist claims to have heard that the script is being written by Little Miss Sunshine/Toy Story 3 scribe Michael Arndt and is "specifically about the formation of ideas". Sounds about right — On April 23rd 2010, it was reported that Arndt was working with Docter on his next project. I find it strange that Pixar/Disney head made such a big deal about the studio and films being filmmaker driven, but then not announcing the screenwriters attached to the various new projects.
Around the same time, Cinematical talked to Doctor, who again confirmed "the film I'm developing now is an original project." Here is an excerpt from that interview:
"That's the hard part, but it's also the exciting part. It's the part where you start to lose your hair and you wake up at three in the morning, but looking back, it's the part that's most rewarding." ... "I'm on a couple of different things that are pretty early on; one's being storyboarded and put up on reels, which is where the rubber meets the road. That's the hard part of it. The early days, usually you can think of all these great ideas, and they sound interesting and intriguing, and then you get in there and you have to storyboard it to make each beat work. Make you care about the character, yet have him flawed so he can have growth throughout the film. Those are hard things to do! And just when you think you understand now how you're going to do it, the next film comes up and hits you from the side and you didn't see it coming. It's not easy!"
Disney will release the movie on May 30th, 2014.