Pixar CCO says live-action remakes of studio’s films are “not very interesting”

Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter has stated that the animation-to-live-action craze does not sit well with him. In an interview with TIME, he said, “This might bite me in the butt for saying it, but it sort of bothers me. I like making movies that are original and unique to themselves. To remake it, it’s not very interesting to me personally.”

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The statement was a reply to a question on the online campaigning for Josh O’Connor to play the protagonist Alfredo Linguini in the live-action adaptation of Pixar’s 2007 film Ratatouille. 

Shooting down the possibility of such a film and citing it might be difficult to make a “live-action rat cute,” he said, “So much of what we create only works because of the rules of the (animated) world. So if you have a human walk into a house that floats, your mind goes, ‘Wait a second. Hold on. Houses are super heavy. How are balloons lifting the house?’ But if you have a cartoon guy and he stands there in the house, you go, ‘Okay, I’ll buy it.’ The worlds that we’ve built just don’t translate very easily.”

Pixar’s next release is the much-anticipated Inside Out 2. Docter said, “If this doesn’t do well at the theatre, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business.” The studio’s last two releases, Lightyear and Elemental, underperformed at the box office. 

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“Part of our strategy is to try to balance our output with more sequels. It’s hard. Everybody says, ‘Why don’t they do more original stuff?’ And then when we do, people don’t see it because they’re not familiar with it. With sequels, people think, ‘Oh, I’ve seen that. I know that I like it.’ Sequels are very valuable that way,” said Docter who also added, “It’s sort of cynical to say people want to see stuff they know. But I think even with original stuff, that’s what we’re trying to do too. We’re trying to find something that people feel like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve been through that. I understand that I recognize this as a life truth.’ And that’s been harder to do.”